


Man of Mine

by ShiDreamin



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Engagement, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Spoilers, Fluff, Love Letters, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: "He’s made a promise.And he’d fulfill it, so that one day he could wear Claude’s crown, and Claude his."-Wedding Dmcl in 7 parts
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 30
Kudos: 66





	1. Man of Heart

_Dearest love,_

_Oh, I can picture your face already. You’ve just washed your hands twice before opening this letter, haven’t you? Of course you have. Don’t worry, this letter is not so important that you need to worry about wetting it._

_I cannot help but laugh as I pen this letter to you. I must admit, I’ve received far too many courting calls before, and as prince I am required to respond to at least four hopefuls a season. This is however the first that I find myself anticipating your response._

_Mitya, please do not worry. If there is anyone I trust to navigate Almyra, you know it would be you. Besides, there are little others who are so well equipped to dance with Almyran royalty than I, and far fewer who are as prepared as you._

_I believe in you._

_Now fold up this letter and don’t come back until I tell you to._

For a sweltering desert, Almyran nights are surprisingly cool. The sea’s gentle breeze swivels and dives around the mountainous clusters that border their desert cities, bringing with it salty air and a certain dampness. It is easy enough to forget the sun’s beating rays under the endless night skies, an entire world’s worth of stars viewable from the skyscraping towers Alymran nobles call home, built into the sides of the mountains, where rivers become bathwater and flora dinner.

The capital is beautiful, golden and blue lights pouring out from the city streets. There are people dancing under the twinkling lanterns, colorful scarves dyed in the rainbow trailing behind their happy songs. Though the music and the words are different from Fodlan’s classical tunes, it is easy enough to follow the strong percussion beats and sing to the words of another. The people smile with all their teeth showing, laughing at the reddened burns that creep up their skin, cheering as they fly on wyvern backs as docile as deer. They are sunshine, and ocean spray, and then, the gentle press of warm hands.

Dimitri closes his eyes, letting the wafting smell of chamomile carry him back.

“The tea is ready?” He asks, releasing the balcony arms. The curtains here are thin, intricate wisps, but they do a remarkable job of blocking off insects from darting into the rooms. Dimitri closes only two, enough to ward off any mosquitoes but not enough to drown out the crowd’s joy, before turning to his love.

“See for yourself,” Claude smiles, one of the gentle ones that sparkle under the high lights built into Almyran ceilings.

For all that Almyra is different, Dimitri has been pleased to discover that their culture shares the same fondness for tea and snacks as Fodlan—nay, perhaps they enjoy tea time _even more_. He had been prepared for nights of solitude, drinking from a pack of chamomile he had sneaked into his bag, but instead Claude had easily snatched the bundle and brewed up a kettle for them to share the very first night. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of ceremonies and parties with a variety of strangers, laughing as they clink cups over fresh sweets from places Dimitri cannot even begin to name.

Claude had laughed at his social exhaustion, asking if he were to tap out so soon. And sure, Dimitri had been tempted to but…

He had made a promise. To Claude, and to himself.

“Something on your mind?” The sweet scent of buttered cakes and peach preserves breaks Dimitri from his thoughts. Claude smiles, pushing a plate of goodies closer, waiting until Dimitri sits before sipping from his cup.

“Apologizes, love. My mind was wandering,” Dimitri smiles back, never able to quell the fluttering of his stomach every time Claude delivers another dizzying grin. When he had first spoken to his friends about the truth behind his and Claude’s relationship, they had simply guffawed about having known about it before, and afterwards, once they had calmed down, assured him that his worrisome symptoms were only the natural result of a crush. It wasn’t until months later, calling in Byleth late at night for advice, that he had come to terms that the rush of love he felt every time Claude smiled would never fade.

“How unlike you. Nervous?” Claude teases. He is right, of course, despite his jest. Dimitri nods, taking in a long swallow of his chamomile, sighing as his nerves finally calm.

“How can I not be?” He replies. Claude places his hand on the table, palm open, and Dimitri takes it in his. Claude is calm, stable, but Dimitri can feel the rushing of his pulse on his wrist, the sweat on his palm, and smiles because Claude is feeling the same on him.

“It’s not every day I get the opportunity to marry a king,” Dimitri whispers. Claude grins, rubbing his thumb over Dimitri’s hand.

“Let’s start with the proposal first, okay?”

-

It would have been impossible for Fodlan to recover from the war alone.

Five years of conquest would destroy any nation, much less one already so politically fragmented and emotionally exhausted. The Empire, once mighty soldiers stained with foreign blood, had no choice but to relinquish its hold on Brigid after it was revealed that their royal pool of money had been quickly fading the past century, and with it, their ability to recover their war-torn lands. The vast mountainous regions made for poor crops, but those farming lands that were once able to born a winter’s worth of food had been burnt by rebel bandits and invading armies early on into the war, and with Brigid’s deserting, there was nothing left to feed their troops.

The Kingdom was no better off, already in a perilous state due to the harsh winter winds that plagued their land, and with much of their farmers turned knights dead from the war, there were few left capable to tending to their frozen fields. The once generous trade routes with and through Dagda had been destroyed years ago, and by the time people had begun to realize their importance, it was already too late.

All eyes had turned to the Alliance.

“What do you think, Claude?” Byleth had asked with that mysterious knowing they sometimes had, when Dimitri had forgotten his words and they know the questions to bring them back around. Claude had grinned, that fluttering in Dimitri never-ending, and the council had broken into shouts.

The Alliance turned to Almyra.

“This is ridiculous! We are perfectly capable of caring for ourselves,” Lorenz had groaned, and then, turning away from his father, had glanced Dimitri’s way. “I suppose you’re perfectly happy with the arrangement?”

“Of course he is! Ooh, that’s _so_ romantic! I’d love to be swept away to another country, wouldn’t you?” Hilda cooed, swooning dramatically into Marianne’s startled arms. She had bat her lashes at Dimitri, sighing.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Dimitri confessed. “We will need to contact Almyra in order to open new trade routes, and I must go because,” because he is king now, a man in a crooked crown, and perhaps his distaste is too obvious as Claude glances over, his gaze burning on Dimitri’s skin, “because I should help recover our crops wherever I can. There is nothing romantic about starvation.”

“It’s not that,” Claude intervened, tugging at Hilda’s ponytail with a laugh as she swiped at his offending hand, “they’re teasing you, Dimitri.” He had shifted forward then, winking at Dimitri before cupping a hand around his ear, whispering.

“You’d have to come if we were getting married.”

If it were impossible to Fodlan to recover without Claude’s interference, it seemed doubly more impossible for Dimitri to focus the rest of the meetings. Much as he tried to respond when questioned, the fact that most of the discussion was focused on Claude, and thus featured Claude speaking as much as possible, made it far too easy for Dimitri’s mind to slip away. He had never been to Almyra before. Quite honestly, there were many places he had heard of but had never seen himself: Duscar, Sreng, Brigid, Dagda. Almyra.

The place where Claude was born.

Dimitri had always thought he’d be married in Fodlan.

“This is irresponsible! We’d be opening our gates to an army of savages!” Lord Edmund’s voice had no issue breaking through any thoughts. It seemed that the complaints were endless, from the Alliance roundtable to the select few who represented Faerghus—could Almyrans be trusted? Should they? What had made Claude so sure that they’d be a capable hand in recovering Fodlan after their history of invading it?

“Hey now,” Claude laughed, the kind of tinny one he pulls out when he’s nervous at night, faking sleep at Dimitri’s side, “you never know. Maybe they have way too many crops and need to share?”

It was almost as though none of them had seen Almyran soldiers in the war, as agile and skilled as any Fodlan men.

“Does Almyra even have farmers? It’s all desert, isn’t it?” Command Gonerail frowned. Hilda had smacked his arm, the sound echoing loud in their chambers. “Well, I don’t know! I’ve never been there!”

The elder nobles certainly never had. It had not been them who stepped foot in the battlegrounds, but their children, their people, and their slaves.

It was easier to focus after that.

“You want—what? To invite brutes into our homes? You are asking for something inane, Riegan,” Lord Gloucester hissed, slamming his palm against the table. “Our nation has been torn by infighting, and in our moment of weakness you want to open the door for a team of savages?”

“It would do you well to refer to Almyran peoples as people, not _savages_ , Sir Gloucester,” Dimitri cut in. The man had quieted instantly, and even Felix had smirked at the forced peace.

It was, unfortunately, temporary. It had only taken a matter of moments before tempers flared hot again, most often in response to Claude’s words. It was infuriating to hear the disrespect used towards the Duke, a role once meant for a party to provide a leading light to the rest of the party. Now it seemed only to be a moniker of chaos.

Chaos, luckily, was an element Dimitri had grown quite accustomed to in war.

“I say we try. Claude, I trust that you are capable of handling this situation on your own?” Byleth had truly grown into their role as commander. They had been reluctant at first, pulling back from the title until, growing desperate, they grabbed control from Dimitri, waiting until he was capable of returning to his own retreat to return the reins of leadership. In war, it had been Byleth’s clear cut words and logic that saved so many lives.

It was nice to see it employed even at the roundtable, earning silence from the outspoken men and women who spoke so disparagingly.

“I am,” Claude nodded. There was a murmuring of dissent in the table, whispers of doubt that seemed to have plagued the entire conversation. Dimitri’s tongue felt heavy, hard, sharp words hissing at his forefront. But this wasn’t his table, and these weren’t his lords.

“Dimitri?” Byleth prompted, and all eyes turned to him.

“Fodlan doesn’t have much left. We have enough to survive this year, but the next? And the winter after that? It will take years of work to restore our fields, but we must first have the means of feeding our citizens while they work. If Claude believes in Almyra, then I believe in Almyra.” Perhaps it was the tension running through the air at their debate, or perhaps it was the unease with which he noticed the casual discrimination everyone seemed to bear towards Almyrans. Perhaps it was both, and the weary look Claude wore of a conversation spoken again and again.

Or perhaps it was a promise Dimitri swore a long time ago.

“Claude’s done a lot for Fodlan. Without him, I cannot confidently say that we would have won the war and that,” _El_ , “we would have defeated the Empire, and the Slithers. He’s done so much for our country and our people, and—” he swallowed, his eyes wandering from gaze to gaze until it hit Claude, staring at him from the head of the table. From the position of Duke, hearing the King’s words. “As Fodlan’s future king, I trust Claude. And if you trust me, you should trust him too.”

It may have been a tad underhanded to speak about his right as the future representative of Fodlan, but it had only earned him proud nods from his lions and grins from the deer. Even Felix had congratulated him at the end of the meeting, nodding to him before heading out.

“Well said,” Byleth praised, patting Dimitri’s shoulder before turning back to Claude, “we will see you two for dinner soon?”

“Maybe. We’ll see if Dimitri has any other riveting speeches for me to swoon for,” Claude winked as he shooed Byleth out. Dimitri sighed, shaking his head even as familiar heat tingled within him. The door closed shut, leaving just them.

Claude, of course, made quick work of the distance.

“Smooth words there, Fodlan’s future king,” he teased. Though Claude cut an imposing figure at the head of the table, wielding a wicked silver whip of a tongue, he tended to be awfully sweet when they were alone, allowing Dimitri to take his hands and pull him close. “If you’re not careful, I’ll fall for you.”

“Have you not already?” Dimitri questioned, letting his lip jut out in an imitation of Claude’s exaggerated pouts. Surely he was not executing it quite the same, but the laugh he earned shook his heart even so.

“So confident, Mr. King. Lucky for you, I’ll concede just this once.” Dimitri laughed along with Claude. He felt funny—the strange tension that wormed around his skin during the discussion, the weight of that crown pressed into his skull at the end of the table; it had disappeared from the room in a flash as soon as Claude had ghosted in, a spirit of joy and laughter. His smiles prompted Dimitri’s own, and he gripped Claude’s hands slightly tighter, tugging him close until he could rest his head against Claude’s.

“Are they always so rude?” There was no need to specify who “they” was. Claude sighed, nodding against the crook of his neck.

“Ruder, if you can believe it. Nobles, am I right?” Nobles, indeed. Though Dimitri considered himself blessed enough to have grown up avoiding particular nobles who snipped and spat so venomously, he had not been lucky enough to avoid the ones who promised wonderful things while cutting away at his resources. It was partially the result of heavy corruption within Faerghus royalty that they were unable to generate enough funds to pay for the following year’s harvest.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri murmured. Whereas his citizens praised and followed him with glee, it seemed that no matter what Claude did, he earned nothing more than thinly veiled scorn. Dimitri had found respect and loyalty with his efforts, and Claude—

“What for? You aren’t the rude one.”

Claude had found him, he supposed.

“Even so, I’m sorry,” he repeated. Claude hummed, his arms wrapping around Dimitri’s back and swaying them from side to side. The sound of Dimitri’s boots, clicking against the tile, echoed in the room.

“Well, there’s nothing to apologize for. Besides, you’re my not-so-secret weapon now.” Weapon? Dimitri raised an eyebrow, sliding his arms up around Claude so to meet his eyes.

“I am?”

“People may not listen to Duke Riegan, but they’ll definitely listen to King Blaiddyd.” That was certainly true. The discussions of Leicester Alliance were out of bounds for a prince from Faerghus, but the title of King of Fodlan granted Dimitri the right to enter any dispute, and advocate for any person. He would ordinarily have advisors to instruct his conduct, but Dimitri found that his professor and friends preferred he make his own decisions. “I’ll have to maximize your cooperation while it lasts, huh?”

“I don’t plan on going away, Claude,” Dimitri sighed, turning his jaw to rest against Claude once more.

“I know. But you can’t predict the future.” Certainly true, even if Claude and Byleth sometimes seemed to have the ability to. There were times where Dimitri found them speaking in hushed conversations right before an upsetting ambush or battle. Try as he might, he had never been able to wrap his head around some of the secrets they kept.

“What if you were the king?” Forgotten want snuck into Dimitri’s words even as his fingers tightened across Claude’s back. They had spent far too many nights speaking about the topic, about his leadership, his future, the good of the peoples. The good of him. Night and day, sun and stars, Dimitri had never managed to convince Claude to take the throne, or at the very least, share it. Not even in name.

One day, even if Dimitri clung to the flickering light of Claude’s vision, he knew that he would wake up with his bed empty and his lover gone.

“Sorry,” Dimitri whispered. Claude pat his back and hummed.

There are songs Claude hums from across the border. They run a little faster, a little deeper, from the fair Fodlan usually plays, and for their unfamiliarity they’re painfully familiar of Claude. There were times where Dimitri had lost himself, wholly and complete, to the cracks that ran across his body, scars from the lifetimes he had been snatched away from the moment their castle had been lost. He had drowned, and burned, and died, and each time he seemed to sink a little deeper into the Earth, closer to the faces and the hands of those who wanted vengeance, it would be the gentle humming from the surface that pulled him afloat once more.

Even if Dimitri wished, he would never be able to run from Claude. Not when those notes echo in his head even a room apart, tempting him closer.

“How long will you be in Fodlan?”

“I don’t know.” A day, a week, a moon? Half a year, perhaps, if Dimitri is lucky. He supposes he is, to at least know that Claude will disappear from his hands with that smile and those eyes, that hum and those promises.

“Not too long, if our crop situation is any indication,” Claude murmurs. It’s true, isn’t it? Fodlan simply cannot survive if Claude were to stay here, the wall between Fodlan and Almyra shut still, the murky seas and distant fights that keep Fodlan years of negotiations away from new trade routes to replace their old one. He had considered Sreng after Sylvain had commented on a large trading capital in the nation, but not a person in Fodlan knew where to send his royal decrees.

Dimitri wanted Claude to stay. Wanted his bed to be warm in the morning, and occupied at night. Wanted his meals shared with someone who loved him, wanted his baths shared with someone he loved. Wanted to hold his hand high, a matching ring on his finger, something that he could keep even when the sun rose and he was alone.

“A moon, then?”

But he was king. And Fodlan was dying.

“A moon,” Claude confirmed.

-

“You’re spacing out again.”

Almyra, it turned out, took some teas with milk and honey and some without. There were even teas Dimitri found mixing multiple flora together, and some with fruits, others with sugar and spices he had never heard before. It had been a pleasant surprise to discover that though Almyran tea time was less a custom and more a passing of time, they were no less serious about the options available.

“Simply enjoying the tea,” Dimitri responded, blowing along the surface. It was especially pleasing since Faerghus was rather bare of tea options, having imported most of it, and Dimitri had grown up drinking it with milk and honey in the palace and without when out with his friends. He hadn’t had chamomile plain in ages, and drinking it like so in Almyra brought him back to pleasant days up north.

Not, of course, that he wasn’t having a splendid time here.

“Uhuh. Sure.” Claude intoned, though he took enough pity on Dimitri to pour him a new cup. Evidently not enough, since he slid it over with a raised eyebrow, “I’m glad you’re not too nervous.” Nervous? Nervous about—

“I’m nervous _now_ ,” Dimitri hissed. Claude grinned, pouring a spoonful of honey over a plate of thinly sliced bread. Dimitri sighed, sipping, his nerves fading away to Claude’s amusement. Try as he might, Dimitri had never managed to truly hold onto any form of anger against Claude. He considered it an aspect of love—after all, Felix failed to hold onto _any_ negative emotions at all when Annette was around.

“Don’t be nervous. It’s not like wooing me is a new thing for you right, Dima?” Wooing would not exactly be the word choice Dimitri preferred, but it was familiar enough. He was not certain fighting a war together would be considered _romantic_ , though Claude had certainly managed to make something about their fights beautiful. There were no flowers or hearts in the blood stains that soaked into their armor, certainly.

Even so, they were in love. Perhaps it was the night skies, and the beds they shared; the arrows that saved Dimitri’s life, the lance that saved Claude’s. The dawning red flag beyond the mountains that they crawled to, their sins of war bare to the world.

Or perhaps it was when Claude had smiled at him on the first day of the academy, and Dimitri had found himself dizzy.

“I should say that to you,” Dimitri murmurs.

“How sweet,” Claude teases, though the smile on his face is genuine, and the flush of his cheeks soft. He sips from his tea, eyes darting away a moment to the clock by the open door. It is not midnight yet, though every moment Dimitri reminiscences time seems to slip from his fingers.

Time, he knows now, that he would rather spend with Claude.

“Is there a way I should do this?” Dimitri finally asks, his brow twitching as his fingers tighten around the scarves. He hadn’t known a proper wrapping method, though the maids here were kind enough to wrap his gift for him in an array of colorful silks. Unfortunately, that meant that he was unable to check on his gift ever since, lest he ruin the wrapping, and it sits in his clammy hands now after two weeks of abandonment.

“I don’t know. The guards usually sell whatever I get.” That—was certainly one way to go about it. Dimitri groaned, unable to quell his discomfort. Certainly it would be easier than having Claude unwrap and judge every present, but even so, the thought of so many feelings lost to a stranger’s hands seemed unnecessary.

“For safety,” Claude clarified, shrugging, and oh, that does make sense, doesn’t it? Dimitri hadn’t had such worries when he was younger, receiving bouquets of flowers and sweets from his family’s adoring citizens, smelling and eating them with glee.

The thought of Claude, a child, unwrapping a poisoned gift burns harder than any discarded scarves.

“I see,” Dimitri murmurs. A “sorry” lies on the tip of his tongue, constant, always, whenever Claude lets slip another piece of the daily fears he takes on simply for existing. There are things Dimitri receives because of his status, the responsibility of being king, a knight, a leading example of Fodlan but—

Claude receives hatred simply for existing. No status, no money, no pride.

Simply the blood that runs through his veins, from birth to death.

“Would it be improper for me to give it to you as usual, then?” The chamomile has cooled against his fingers. Without prompting, Claude pours until his cup is full once more, allowing the teapot to hit the table with a dull thud.

“I’m not sure,” Claude coaxes, tilting his head so that he may peer his emerald eyes upwards, darling, dangerous, for how quickly it causes Dimitri’s heart to pound, “why don’t you give it a try?”

His heart would pound regardless of Claude’s actions, honestly. Dimitri swallows, rising from the table to stand on shaky legs. The pillows beneath his feet do not allow for much traction, and he must be careful to toe around the cushions so as to not drop his present against the wonderful spread and teas. His face is burning, surely, red and hot against his ears.

Claude smiles, expectant, and Dimitri knows he would gladly burn an infinite times over to see Claude again.

Dimitri drops to his knees, taller than Claude even now, kneeling on the floor, his love on cushions and him not. His lips feel itchy, sweaty, partly from the Almyran weather, partly from the shifting of fabrics in his hands. Partly from the way Claude’s eyes track his, their lips parting.

“I love you,” he whispers, low, leaning forward to kiss Claude. He does, rushing hot, always, the unending flush of a first love swirling within him. Sharper than any arrow, longer than any spear. A promise, always, of time.

Just a moment to kiss, alone, away from prying eyes and dangerous faces. A moment to make out under the shade of the trees, dressed in civilian clothing and getting caught regardless. A moment to sneak away in conference rooms, when the roundtable has given up, and they can occupy an entire yelling chamber with nothing but the sound of lips meeting lips.

Just a promise of time spent together.

There is no sweeter thing Dimitri could ask for.

“I love you,” he repeats, pulling away. Claude follows him, perhaps instinctively, perhaps not, though it doesn’t quite matter when they’re kissing again, gentle, slow, the world itself stopped for a moment for them. Dimitri can almost forget the present in his hand, the burning of his veins, the lights and sights of a home he’s not lived in.

Yet.

“I love you,” Claude echoes, softer, sweeter, always a tad timid when he allows Dimitri to peel away his masks until it is his lover hiding underneath, kind and wonderful and more beautiful than he could ever imagine.

They can spend a lifetime together, if only Claude would allow him the chance.

First, Dimitri must let him.

“Here,” Dimitri manages, letting the gift fall from his hands into Claude’s. The scarves are perhaps too wonderful, sliding off Claude’s thighs immediately to the floor. It knocks against the table on its way, jostling the tea, Dimitri’s chamomile spilling over the rim.

“No—!” The damage is done. His tea splatters against the surface of the heart shaped cookies, splashing over them to hit the rest of their colorful assortment. Dimitri and Claude stare at the slowly dripping tea, silent until Claude snorts, turning his head away.

“That wasn’t—I’m sorry!” Dimitri wails, dismayed. Claude tucks his head against Dimitri’s chest, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

“It’s not—You’re just—oh, Mitya!” Claude breaks, laughing loudly as he flops back against the cushions. Dimitri groans, his face burning now for an entirely separate reason. He’s managed to deliver countless speeches over his lifetime without stuttering, and performed displays of knighthood for strangers all across the land.

“I was nervous,” he confesses, the words both bitter and honest.

“I _know_ ,” Claude chuckles, finally settling down enough to grab the present from the table’s leg, placing it on his stomach. He runs his palm over it, humming that same tune. “It’s sweet. You’re not normally this nervous.”

“I’m not normally asking for your hand.”

The words blurt out before he can stop them, lingering in the air. He hadn’t meant to say that, to put those words to this occasion. To stare at the reality of him following Claude into Almyra for more than a moon.

They came for trade routes, didn’t they?

“That’s true,” Claude murmurs, loud in their quiet. His hands come up once more, carding through Dimitri’s hair, pulling him forward, closer, down until his head is resting against Claude’s chest, rising and falling in balance. “It’s a big promise, isn’t it?”

“One I’ve dreamed of many times before.” The confession is cold in his mouth, reminiscent of late nights and early dawns. He had made this promise, swore these words, over and over again, but the wings of fate have never treated him so kindly. There was always an “if” to his words—if they survived the battle, the war, the rebels, the shadows. If they could wake up to another morning together, if Dimitri could feel a warm body in his bed, if Claude could stay another night.

If he could muster up the courage to turn an if into a then.

“Mitya, it’s time.” 

The clock does not strike when it hits midnight. Claude stands first, pressing a kiss against Dimitri’s temple, extending a hand Dimitri pulls to rise, kissing Claude’s temple, then his lips. There are words he plans to say, had written down and forgotten again, only the turning hands of time running through his head.

“I regret this already,” Dimitri chuckles, his eyes flickering to the clock and back.

“I can always reject the proposal. I’ve done it before,” Claude teases. Dimitri sighs, pretending to ponder. Certainly, it would be a relief to not have to jump through such arduous loops, but—

He’s made a promise.

And he’d fulfill it, so that one day he could wear Claude’s crown, and Claude his.

“Don’t,” Dimitri swears, an order and a plea.

“You could always take it back?” Claude offers. It’s light, and it’s tempting, and nothing more than a dangling bait from a hook.

“I would never,” Dimitri bites, and earns a farewell kiss for his loyalty.

_Welcome back, Mitya. Don’t cry. There are tissues on the nightstand near your desk._

_Hey._

_Thank you for the dagger._

_You’re still going to cry, aren’t you? Wipe your tears and come back, Mitya, or else I’m going to cry too. I knew when you had that sparkle in your eyes that you were going to work on this, even if I’ve told you a million times that you could just bring me a pebble off the side of the road and I would be no less happy._

_But that wouldn’t be you, now would it? No, I had to fall for the most noble and wonderful man in all of Fodlan, and gods, the whole world probably. If you had not gone above and beyond you would not be the man I agreed to be engaged to, hm?_

_~~What have I done to deserve you~~_

_Oh Mitya, I know that will set you off again, you giant emotional lump of a man. Hah! This feels ridiculous. I haven’t penned such letters in all my life._

_I suppose Judith has her right to laugh at me now. I always told her I had no plans on marrying anyone I couldn’t trust, and I suppose that came back to bite me in the ass. Oh, don’t laugh at me, you jerk. You know just as well that you weren’t exactly marriage happy either._

_Gods. We’re really doing this, aren’t we?_

_~~You should know~~_

_~~In the future trials~~_

_~~Just in case~~_

_~~I trust you.~~_

_I love you. Don’t keep me waiting too long, okay?_

_Your lover,_

_Khalid_

  1. _The dagger will spend its nights under my pillow now._




	2. Man of Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Would you survive without your hands?” Tiana smiles, setting the final cup on his platter. A gift wrapped in thorns. “Without your arms? Your legs?
> 
> “I cut off the limbs of the last man who tried to court my son.”

_Dearest Betrothed,_

_How was that? Shocking?_

_Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten your promise to me! How will my fragile heart ever recover? Oh, I’m in so much pain already, forget me Mitya! Save yourself!_

_~~I miss your voi~~_

_You can just go ahead and imagine I’m being carried away by a wyvern._

_I’m sure that you think the next step will be a breeze, won’t it? Big, bad ~~sexy~~ Blaiddyld strength after all. Think again Mitya—my mom is no walk in the park. She’s lead Almyran’s platoon on the ocean, which means you better not end up dying to her._

_If I find out you lost because you didn’t train beforehand I’ll fight you myself._

Almyran training halls are not so different from Faerghus ones, in that they’re both plenty well stocked with equipment and busy at any hour of the day. Dimitri exhales slow between thrusts of Areadhbar, ripping holes into the clothed training dummies. He hadn’t planned on bringing his weapon across the border initially, but Claude had told him it would be for the best.

It would be Claude who thought this far ahead, before Dimitri had even decided on what item to carve with their names.

“You’re up early, kid.”

Nader is a pleasant surprise in the training grounds. He wields his axe with no mercy in the battlegrounds, aiming only to puncture, to tear, to destroy, laughing near heroically at the tops of his wyvern.

Here, he pats the heads of the local children, teaching them tricks that would have cost their families a fortune for a private lesson. Instead, Nader is a warm beacon for all those curious, and Dimitri finds that he is no exception.

“I have less than a week left to prepare,” Dimitri reminds Nader, the initial words of challenge ringing in his head still. Claude had not been there to bear witness, but his father was, and the delighted and vicious twinkle in the Almyran King’s eyes were all that needed to be said.

The Queen of Almyra would not go down easy, if at all.

“You were here all day yesterday,” Nader reminds him, his smile smoothing out as he takes in Dimitri from head to toe. He’s wearing his shirt from the day before, sweat rendering it sticky to his skin, dressed for slovenly combat rather than a proper tutorial. “You doing okay, kid?”

Kid is so close to kiddo. Dimitri winces.

“I will admit,” he coughs, something garbled in his throat, “I may have overestimated myself. I was certain that I would be able to handle these coming moons, but…”

He hadn’t planned for it to take moons. He had thought it would take one at _maximum_ , hoping that Almyran ceremonies would be less time consuming and complex than Fodlan’s own. In a way, they are—no yearlong contracts and arranged courting ceremonies by noble men who think only of inheriting each other’s power. Almyran courting may take as little as a week.

It can also take as long as a year. Dimitri swallows, feeling a little piece of him swim away at the thought.

Nader laughs, smacking his arm with warmth. It is near enough to rattle Dimitri out of his head, a surprise rarely found in Fodlan, but Nader’s strength cannot be questioned. Yet, if it were him Dimitri were to face off against for Claude’s hand, he can’t help but wonder if he would be half as nervous.

“It’s only been a day, and you’re already lovesick?” Dimitri pinches his mouth at the words, though he cannot refute the truth, betrayed already by the rising of heat to his cheeks. Nader notices and laughs twice as hard, guffawing until his shoulders are hunched inwards and his back shakes.

“I cannot help it,” Dimitri murmurs, low and under his breath. It’s not intended to be heard but Nader picks up on it, ears honed by years of subterfuge, listening for that low whistle of a signal in the chaos of war. He slows his laughter to a crawl, placing his hand on Dimitri’s shoulder once more.

“If you miss him, he’s missing you twice as much.” Nader’s eyes flit upwards to their royal grounds, the long pillars that spiral upwards housing the extended royal family and their servants. Up there, in one painted gold with dripping green and blue spirals, a sculpture of a white wyvern roaring as she climbs along the floors, is where Claude sleeps.

“Put on a good show, kid. He’ll be grinning ear to ear when you’ve won.”

-

Politics, Dimitri has learned, are no different regardless of the country they’re affecting nor the language they’re spoken in. His Almyran is too raw, childish in quality, to properly convey his words, making the long discussions about trade dull. What there to be said flies over his head faster than Ingrid’s Pegasus, and he had struggled to find a moment of peace to review the deals.

When there was time to rest, it had always been Claude by his side, chuckling at his struggle, endearing to his words. It had been Claude who measured out the good and the bad, who explained the details in depth, and it had been him who negotiated with the King and Queen. His parents.

His mother, who stares down at Dimitri with iron eyes and a ruby smile, capable to tearing his head from his torso and using his bloody neck as a serving tray.

“I’m surprised,” she starts, pouring him a cup of chamomile, with a little milk, swirling it with a cinnamon stick. The movement is familial, warm, those battle ready hands softened by love for her children. She passes it to him, and he wonders absentmindedly when Claude had the chance to tell her his favorite.

“What about?” He echoes, hoping that it is not as dull as he thinks. There is a pounding relief that she speaks Fodlan, as does the king, and many of their advisors. Why they chose to use Almyran in discussion instead is a thought he doesn’t wish to dwell on without Claude as his partner.

“You have just one chance to request time from me before the trial,” Tiana, Queen of Almyra, drops three spoonfuls of honey into her tea. Lysithea would adore her. “I had been expecting a spar.” Years of experience betray her, something almost bored seeping into her voice.

It makes sense. Claude was the crown prince, and now, confirmed to succeed the throne. Dimitri could only imagine the number of marriage requests he receives.

He doesn’t bristle. Tiana smiles regardless, gazing at him over the rim of her cup.

“It’s ceremonial to have tea with the spouses’ parents.” She does not need an explanation, yet the words flow out regardless. “Sparring with you may have been the smarter option, but I feel it is only right for me to speak with you first. About marriage.” He hesitates, the click of his teeth audible, but Tiana does not speak, simply waiting for him to continue. A mother’s patience. “I would like you to see me favorably.” As Claude’s lover.

“What makes you think I don’t already?” The words are as much a tease as a challenge, echoing off her fierce demeanor in the Almyran court. Claude had warned him that his mother was no ordinary Fodlan woman, and the fact has made itself abundantly clear. No, that fiery passion would not survive in Fodlan, not where women are expected to be dainty damsels, waiting at home for a war to end and a husband that will not return.

Tiana carries a sword around her hip even now, sipping a concoction of soaked fruits and honey tea. She is the picture of an elegant woman—lovely, poised, and deadly.

He does not think she would kill him before the trial.

“I have never courted a person before,” Dimitri confesses. He thinks of the many maidens who had been brought to his side, giggling, flirtatious, all while their fathers had pressed at their backs, eyes as sharp as eagle talons. Looking not at Dimitri but through him, to the title that he bore, to the weight on his shoulders. Those who wanted the name and not the pressure.

People who would eat him alive if they were given the opportunity.

“Uncertain, are you?” She poses the question expecting no answer. Dimitri nods besides himself, and that earns him a crescent of a smile. In that moment, she strikes a familiar cut to professor, knowing beyond his means, encouraging him to take that fragile step forward.

“Well, what would you like to know?”

She talks about Claude. It’s a familiar and unfamiliar topic all at once, the memories she speaks of a striking image against the cunning man he knows, and yet, their core wants and ticks are so similar he cannot help but believe her words. She pours him a second cup, then a third, refilling them before he can even attempt to grab the pot.

The one time he manages to get his fingers around the handle, she _shoos_ him. A mother scolding her child. He lets it go as though it is scalding and she drizzles his honey in the shape of a flower in an unspoken apology.

“He used to carry Petunia everywhere. Even when she started to grow faster than he did. We spent a year watching him struggle to eat dinner, because she kept stealing his plate,” Tiana laughs. Dimitri thinks of Claude even now, refusing to leave his wyvern’s side for long, and how she roars when he is not there. He wishes, sorely, to have met Claude as a child. “Couldn’t pry a thing from that kid. If he weren’t a prince he’d be in jail as a petty thief.” Her voice turns acidic at that, the lively fondness fading.

“Well,” she murmurs, blowing a ripple over the surface of her tea. Dimly, Dimitri notices she doesn’t have a crumb on her, despite the fact that he knows he’s had to wipe his mouth twice. “I’m sure you didn’t want to hear just the happy things, did you?”

Tiana speaks without waiting for his reply, the authority of _Queen_ brimming along her words, the anger of a mother rippling through her. The Claude she speaks of now is bitter, wrought thin from betrayal, trust made of fragile threads, and this variation that she speaks of is so familiar it burns. The Claude that sleeps only with a dagger under his pillow, with half an armory hidden in his room, with a knife tucked into the academy sleeves in a hidden pocket he had sewn himself.

Only a fool would think he were born half as shrewd when Claude’s elusive smiles rival the sun. _That_ was Claude—the stars and the moons his backdrop.

Not this poisoned boy, who had nearly choked to death alone as his father left to herald his advisors and his mother gone with a sword in her hand, refusing to return until she carried with her the heads of those who dared.

She’s stopped drinking her tea, though the words don’t end. A lifetime of hovering near death. Almost dying, and recovering, and then again, until one night she had come upon his bloody body, a knife in his neck, and stared in cold silence when a silver crescent moon erupted from his pale body. A warrior forced into a child’s form, gasping for air with a throat that should have been slit.

Her fingers could shatter her cup. Not for the first time, Dimitri wonders if the crest had truly passed by her, her strength unmovable and unrelenting. A women forged steel by motherhood.

“He’s a strong man,” Dimitri interrupts. Her eyes flicker between past and present before she takes another sip of her tea, slow, purposeful. She unwinds before him, the same mocking display Claude puts on for show, and she sees him in her so obviously now. Those eyes, and that smile, and the thrumming reminder that she could kill him if she so desired.

“He is,” she says, and he knows in those words that it is his head on the line.

“As king,” she is certain of that, so certain, and he remembers his own mother’s smile, how she would swear upon her lifetime that Dimitri would be every bit the king she envisioned him to be, “Khalid has a lot of enemies. It is just the way of the royal world.” She raises a brow at him, challenging, unspoken. He does not respond.

“It’s a mother’s job to protect her child.” Simply stated, as though a universal law. Perhaps it is. “But it’s a _lover’s_ job to protect their beloved.”

She takes his cup from his platter, removing his tired cinnamon sticks for new ones, pouring in the remainder of the tea and swirling in the last of the milk. Her eyes are tired but furious, her hands gentle but steel.

“Would you survive without your hands?” Tiana smiles, setting the final cup on his platter. A gift wrapped in thorns. “Without your arms? Your legs?”

“I cut off the limbs of the last man who tried to court my son.”

He can picture it so clearly in his mind. The flowing sleeves of her tunic hide the muscles he’s glimpsed along her arms, her legs, the ease with which she swings axes that even the knights of Seiros would struggle with. A man who had been too self-serving, who had thought a woman from Fodlan an easy target, her mixed son an even easier one. Someone he could use for his own desires, to enter the throne.

The screams that man must have yelled when she felled him in battle, a face cloaked in death.

“Thank you.” Her eyes widen in surprise before they narrow again, perfect, the moment then and gone in an instant. Dimitri swallows, his fingers tight around his cup. “Thank you for protecting him.”

“Of course,” she says, colder than any words she’s shared all evening. “It’s a mother’s job.”

She stands before him, Queen of this nation, mother of the man he loves, knowing that while in Fodlan they may have made a mockery of her for her gender, in Almyra she is known for her brutal efficiency. They ask if she is truly Fodlan born when they see her steps, her sword, her power. The grin she flashes when she strikes down another foolish grunt who dared to see her son as anything less than human.

Dimitri bows to her, bending at the waist, the way Lorenz had taught him. Leichester manners for an Almyran warrior. If she smiles, he does not see it.

He offers a hand then, an open palm up the way he’s seen Claude do, and she takes it.

“Thank you for the tea,” Dimitri says. Her eyes refuse to stray from his, demanding in her sudden quiet, and he breaks away first. Looks at his hands. Looks at hers. Her sword.

“I would gladly give you my limbs if it would grant me permission to make Khalid happy.” She doesn’t smile, nor frown, her mask a perfect picture of her son in the council room. Frigid and bright all at once, alluring and hypnotic, drawing him into their folds until there is a dagger lodged in his shoulder and a burning in his heart.

Tiana raises his hand, and then, in a manner distinctly Fodlan, kisses his knuckles.

“Thank you for the tea,” she echoes. The ends of her dress flutter along the floor as she turns away. The door closes softly behind her.

Dimitri drinks the last cup of chamomile, now cool, alone. She had never told him how she knew his favorite.

-

Fodlan’s maps of Almyra are inadequate at best, and profoundly racist at worst. Linhardt had dug up what he could from the Abyss libraries with the help of Yuri and Ashe, but at the end of the day it had taken Claude to redraw the entire Almyran empire, chuckling softly as he did so.

“A side branch through these mountains would be wise, correct? To build a second port with Sreng?” Dimitri asked, pointing along the hand drawn map. Claude chuckled in his ear, warmth pooling in his stomach as Claude leaned in, pressing along Dimitri’s back.

“Those aren’t mountains,” Claude laughed, an ease to his words, “they’re rivers.”

Oh. Dimitri squinted at the doodles, wondering how exactly the cluster of triangles are supposed to resemble water. He wouldn’t say any such thing to Claude, though he doesn’t need to, Claude clearly catching something on his face that earns him a sideways grin.

“Okay,” Claude sighed, an exaggerated exhale as he stretches, before leaning over with his pen once more. “Let’s go over this again.”

The edge of Almyra nearest to Fodlan is plain desert and mountains, high ridges along the sloping sides that fade into coastal cliffs and towns. There are rolling hills where the desert fades into forests, clusters of green around the blue rivers that crack along the land, wetting what would otherwise be a dry expanse. Almyra, Dimitri learned, was not once crowded along Fodlan border, but instead a nation much farther away, a small country made of seafaring sailors. Then it had expanded, to take in horses, and wyverns, and along the edge of Fodlan, pegasi.

There, along the southern coast of Almyra, is a blue squiggle Claude drew. Home, he had said, a word so simple and complex. A city clustered in mountains, overseeing ocean, wyverns that share a world with humanity, sea serpents that play with children. Dimitri had called it a fairy tale, and Claude had laughed, reminding him that he had once thought the same of Faerghus winters.

Dimitri pointed at that place now, hearing Claude’s voice fade.

“Would this be where we go to marry?”

“So impatient, your majesty.” Claude winked, Dimitri’s words slipping off of him like another robe in the summer heat. “If you desire me so badly, we have the archbishop right here.”

Byleth was not physically in the room, but if they were, they may have huffed and left. That, or join Claude in his teasing, as Dimitri has learned his friends are want to do. If he were younger, he would have declared it betrayal.

Nowadays, he takes it in embarrassed stride, too occupied with following the winding clues Claude leaves behind for him to gobble up.

“I’m serious,” Dimitri said. He had not been looking for indulgence, nor hypotheticals. Claude had paused, looking at him, slow, cautious. As though this were new.

As though Dimitri had not asked him about it moons before, the same ache when he woke up wondering if today would be the day he woke up alone. As though he had not the week before, when Claude had dug up those old maps and told Hilda about it instead of him.

Dimitri could burn alive in these feelings of his, if Claude would allow him.

“Almyran courting isn’t the same as Fodlan,” Claude had explained, hesitant, always, new information slipping through his teeth as though forced out. “It’s much more complex.”

“That’s okay,” Dimitri said, as easy as breathing. Claude scoffs, a barely audible passing of air, looking away. Retreating behind his cage, looking for safety. But he’s still tucked besides Dimitri’s elbow, resting his face against his shoulder.

To Claude, Dimitri is safety.

The realization could have stopped him even in the worst of the war, warmth cutting through the bloodlust.

“We have less than a moon to be in Almyra,” Claude pointed out, pouring over the map once more. Hands along the mountains, the ridges, the rivers and plains. “We need to build out at least these four posts in our time, two coastal ports, before you have to return to Fodlan.” The reminder stings, a promise of silent days once more.

“They’re not going to be _happy_ to work with Fodlan,” Claude had said, factual, blunt. So unlike the whimsical half-truths he swings in the council room. Just the truth boiled down between them. “It could take moons before we have a proper trading system set up. As of right now, Almyra doesn’t have much to benefit from trading with Fodlan. To them, it doesn’t make sense why they can’t just conquer Fodlan.”

Folding Fodlan into their lands, their culture, their warmth. Food, and water, and enough equipment to supply every man and woman to survive the next winter. It sounds tempting on paper until one remembers what is lost in a name. A culture. A history.

“It would just be easier to ask me when I return.”

This war they’ve fought so hard through, erased from the world.

Dimitri had nodded. Had agreed, dimly, the same half-baked arguments in the same resolutions. There was no facing Claude and expecting conventional victory. It was just the way Claude worked, running the world in the back of his mind. Always running. Always.

Dimitri had kissed Claude over their maps, holding him still.

“It would be easier,” Dimitri conceded, but he was king, is king, holds the Fodlan flag and wears the Fodlan crown, and Claude hadn’t been able to hide the flicker in his eyes when Dimitri had kissed him again and again.

Letting him be selfish.

Letting him want.

“I want to do it right,” Dimitri had pled, and Claude had kissed him back. Had wrangled his fingers in Dimitri’s hair and tugged, had moaned into Dimitri’s mouth half as pleading and twice as knowing, a comfortable weight in Dimitri’s hands. Had a smile that could cut diamonds when he let Dimitri spill him over their maps, leaving a mess on their council room table.

Had left Dimitri breathless and needing only him, always him, that gorgeous sliver of a man with the charisma of a god left unwound.

He did not remember Claude never answered his plea until the next day, staring at newly drawn maps and the table’s clean surface.

-

“Dimitri!”

One may be surprised at how powerful a pink blur can be until it comes crashing into you with more force than a wyvern. Dimitri yelps in surprise, stumbling, glancing down at the pink menace in his arms. No, not a menace. Familiar pink hair, tied up around a crown of flowers, and billowing lace sleeves around a blue gemstone bracelet?

“Hilda?” He gasps. She grins, hopping in place. He had almost forgotten how small she was, what with her amazing strength, nearly swinging him in her arms. She laughs, delightful, her voice echoing.

“Who else?” Indeed. “Claude sent me to find you!”

“Claude?” The word cracks in his mouth, earning him another grin, sharper than the last. A shark smelling blood in the water. She is a menace after all.

“You have spoken to him?” Dimitri continues, unable to keep the want from his voice. Her features smooth into something both romantic and pity, patting his shoulder with significantly more gentleness.

“He’s only not allowed to talk to you,” she reminds him, eyes soft. A fact that should not sting but does, the absent of warmth by his side starker than even he could have predicted. Dimitri had refused to sleep the second night, not wanting to wake to nothing once more. As though hearing his voice, Hilda sighs.

“You should sleep.”

“How is he?” He asks instead, and she allows him that.

“He’s doing okay,” a shrug betraying her casualness, “could be better. You know, if his gallant prince was by his side.”

Sleeping well, then. Perhaps taking the free time he has now to dedicate himself to the studies he could never finish in Fodlan, not with his classmates needing his help, not with the war splitting Fodlan, and certainly not with Dimitri forcing him to the bed. Needing a companion by his side.

Dimitri had been aware that Claude would not abandon him at the first opportunity, but the pressing worry that Claude would awake alone one day and realize that he was better without Dimitri had only grown these past few days. While Dimitri sleeps worse, Claude could sleep better, free of the shackles a boar places on his ankles.

Every bit the wyvern he rides, a child of the sky.

“I’m glad.”

“You’re no fun,” Hilda groans, smacking Dimitri in the arm with the same strength as a battalion. He stumbles, eyes widening, as hers narrow. “Of course he’s not doing okay! He misses you!”

The words should not warm him as much as they do.

“He complained the whole time! I came here all the way from Fodlan, riding _alone_ on a wyvern, and the first thing he asks me to do is ask if you’re okay! You two aren’t even married yet!” She’s exaggerating, false anger warming her words, aware Dimitri clings to every syllable. “It’s been three days. How’d you two survive without each other?”

How, indeed? Dimitri knows that he had spent years of his life sleeping alone, in a bed too big and a room even bigger, but the thought of that now is impossible. He hadn’t known then how the skies looked with Claude at their center, how food seemed to taste when Claude had smiled eating his favorites. How his world would dip and pulse when they found something magnetic to revolve around.

How he would chase something gold with dull fingers that he once thought would never want again.

“I don’t know,” he chuckles.

“You sap,” Hilda snaps, with none of the venom, and he soaks in her words with pleasure, thinking about the man he wishes to marry.

-

Someone in the castle should tell Dimitri that he gets too loud when he’s embarrassed. It’s only proper, if they’re going to go through with this whole “ritual ceremony” thing, to make sure that Dimitri should be temporarily banned from Claude’s wing, lest gods forbid Dimitri break the rules. Claude sighs, crooking his head against the door, folding the letter length wise then width wise, Hilda’s laughter through the door.

“I love him,” Dimitri confesses through the cracks. Claude smiles, opening the letter once more, rereading the script.

This is cheating. Too bad he’s not going to tell anyone about it.

-

Almyra sunrises remind Dimitri of a fond mix between Derdriiu and Enbarr, a mix of mountainous ranges cutting the sun’s rays into glossy slivers and a wide expanse of water for those to bounce off of. He breathes in the light, warming his bed where another person cannot, and grabs Areadbhar on his way out.

Almyrans from far and wide have come to the capital in anticipation, filling the seats around one of the main tourney grounds. The front two rows sit the King and his advisors, and with them those who carry royal blood, aunts and uncles who smile thinly, looking for the person who wishes to inherit the throne their children have lost the right to.

Nader had said that this would be a grand fight. That turnout to see the queen in action is always high, but for once in many long years, there is anticipation that she may lose. That the wyvern woman who would lay the land flat for her cursed child may finally fall in combat.

Dimitri swallows and enters the grounds.

Tiana is a radiant spirit, her glossy armor reflecting the sun’s rays, her hair carefully tied up in a ponytail not unlike Hilda’s a circlet above her ears. Purely decorative, along with her sweeping skirt that trails along the floor. A battle hazard.

One might think she was treating him lightly if not for the way she thrusts out her sword in mock combat, powerful enough to behead a man with ease.

She turns to him and smiles. In a distance, she looks like Claude.

“Your Majesty,” she greets, a mocking sing-song of a respectful greeting. The kind woman who made him his favorite tea flickers in and out of sight with the same woman who would tear a man to shreds, icy in the Almyran heat as he died begging for his life.

“Your Majesty,” Dimitri responds in kind, genuine, winning nothing more than a twitch of her lips for it.

Tiana allows him the minutes of warmup, stretching out tired limbs, working through familiar routines with Areadbhar. She doesn’t even watch, instead turning her back to him. Giving him the advantage.

He wonders if it would have been better to ask her for a practice spar.

“Your Majesty.” His words ring quiet in the stadium, somehow loud against the flush of Almyran chatter against his ears. She straightens immediately, trained, comfortable, rolling her shoulders as she tosses her sword from hand to hand. Ambidextrous, just like Claude trained to be.

He thinks she ought to be smiling, but the mask she wears is nothing but ice, squaring her shoulders and bending at her knees. Waiting. Cautious, not from need, but curiosity. Wanting to see what he can do before she runs him into the ground.

Dimitri licks his lips. Raises Areadbhar in a way not unlike a general leading an army, and earns a delighted flash of teeth for his motion.

He closes the distance immediately, swinging Areadbhar with his right arm in a curve meant to slam into her ribs. Tiana doesn’t give him the chance, ducking beneath the swing and slicing upward, missing his chin, only to have a foot brought up and kicking against his chest. It does its job of knocking him temporarily off balance, and she moves before he can regain his footing.

She parries. It lands light, barely tapping him, like a tease. Gentle training, and for a moment he thinks that she is treating this like a game.

The thought barely materializes in his head before she slams the sword against his gauntlet, hard enough to snap the chain and crack the metal against his skin, searing pain from the fresh cut.

“Well?” Tiana grins, vicious, wanting, and Dimitri berates himself for ever thinking she could be anything less than strong.

Her steps are hurried, ferocious, and though the reach of Areadbhar is farther than a sword she never gives him the moment to take advantage of that space. Pressing closer, pressing harder, until she can hardly hear his own breath over the screeching of their weapons, threatening to snap each other.

She does not fight like Nader, large and overpowering strength that roars like a bear become human. Nor Hilda, who pouts and whines until she raises her axe in a pretty curve to cut a man in half. No. Her footwork is lightweight and fast, every swing a dance, but her livid eyes betray her when her biceps tighten and she rotates the curve of the hilt in her hand, slamming it downward, overwhelming. Unbecoming.

A human mix of two nations.

Up close, Dimitri realizes she fights like Claude.

“Do not get distracted.” Tiana’s voice is remarkably patient despite herself, at odds with the slice of her sword along his bicep, digging into flesh. He grits his teeth, doubling backward, pivoting on his left foot so that he may swing Areadbhar in a wide circle. She dodges out of the way with familiar ease, but it does its job: creating distance.

If Claude were here, he would shoot an arrow from Dimitri’s back, always watching. Instead, Dimitri roars, a king and a lover, a human and a monster, and rushes forward once more, Areadbhar aimed for her heart.

Tiana deflects, her sword catching him, bringing up a leg to ram her knee into his side. He grunts, biting back a hiss of pain, turning Areadbhar so that he may drive the hilt into her stomach. Just slightly too slow. Tiana slips through his gap with practiced ease, nicking his cheek.

A warning. Dimitri lips the blood that runs onto his lips, watching Tiana retreat. No, not that. She’s giving him space. Watching him breathe.

Giving him a fair chance, he realizes. One that she hadn’t given to the men and women who fought her before, crow eyes descending onto her jewel.

The stadium’s noise awakes all at once. The King is laughing over chilled fruits and honeyed sweets, watching his lover and his son’s potential suitor with a gleam. His advisors drink with him, in tempo, though more than a few pass whispers between themselves, eying Dimitri with dulling curiosity, sated from just a few minute’s combat. Their audience, those who paid their way in without a royal connection, are insatiable. They cheer with the energy Dimitri must draw, seeking blood, seeking treasure.

They are waiting for Tiana to cut him up and leave him a bloody puddle on the floor.

“Dimitri!”

He jerks, eyes widening at the voice ringing out. His name without an Almyran accent, rendered foreign after daily conversations. It would be a perfect time to silence his tongue for good, running a blade though his neck, but Tiana does not move. Gives him the moment to search.

He finds Hilda’s pink hair with ease. Besides her, Nader, drinking from a goblet. Besides him…

“Professor?”

“Dimitri!” Tiana calls, and it is only now that Dimitri realizes that her Fodlan too is accented with a bite. She slams her sword against the ground, raising up a cloud of dirt as she raises it up once more, aimed at his missing eye. She smiles, flaming, alive.

Areadbhar goes up just in time, the ring of their weapons shrieking loud enough to drown out their watchful eyes, their chaotic cheers. Tiana leans in, every bit a Queen, a warrior, a mother, as she speaks.

“Remember what you’re fighting for.”

His foot comes up in a mimicry of her own, and even as her eyes light up in understanding (and is that pride?) her body cannot react fast enough. He kicks her away with the strength of a man in war, stained and scarred and bloodied, roaring as he brings Areadbhar down on her shaky stance. She is faster than him, worn tight by her own battles, catching the strike with a slide of her sword.

He does not manage to crush in her skull, but he continues the strike regardless. When he catches the skirt of her dress, tearing through the decorative fabric with Areadbhar’s head, her grin turns vicious once more.

“Good!” She shouts, ripping the fabric herself until the glossy train sits at her feet. The screams around him are a dull rush as she comes forward once more, light, airy, turned demonic as her sword slams down. He brings Areadbhar up in time, knees buckling at the sudden force, aware that she has every intent of crushing him in her gaze. She retreats before he can make another grab at her, dancing along the dirt, grabbing momentum when she can.

In, and out. Weaving patterns along the ground of their steps, hers light, his heavy. He stomps on the floor twice, wishing it were solid marble, giving him the spring he needs to slam into her fully. Her sword aims for his side and misses, slamming her knee against his thigh instead, and though pain ripples through him he refuses to relent, driving Areadbhar down where she should be.

Tiana’s hair comes undone around the circlet, breath starting to come out as shallow pants, but her eyes burn regardless. Dimitri knows he looks no better, cut up with shattered armor digging still into his skin, but the beast he once cast away claws within him, pleased with this outlet. He shouts as he swings Areadbhar into her left side, anticipating her duck, and changing the direction to clip her shoulder still. Her mouth is shocked loose of her grin, before she lunges with her left foot forward to slice at his heart.

It misses, barely, slicing along his armor while his left hand released Areadbhar to grab at her injured shoulder, dragging her in closer. Tired, she is faster still, her hand coming up to claw at his face in a way distinctly un-noble. He sputters, surprise forcing his hand loose, and the momentary advantage is lost when her sword hilt slams into his chest.

Dimitri bites back the weary groan of pain, stumbling back even as his hands advance forward once again, Areadbhar aimed for her head. She dodges, sliding under his arm, but he is ready this time. Just as her sword rises up, he spits at her, a mix of blood and sweat hitting her face, and the moment her eyes squeeze shut despite herself he thrusts Areadbhar against her arm.

Tiana retreats this time, her arm shaking slightly, the curve of her mouth real as she assesses Dimitri again. A warrior seeing another warrior. A queen seeing a foreign king.

A mother seeing the man who loves her son.

“Claude taught me that,” Dimitri says, as though there would be anyone else willing to teach Faerghus’ prince how to fight dirty. Tiana chuckles, dry, flicking the blood off her sword as she raises it once more, squaring her feet.

“I know.”

His arms burn with agony as she cuts into them again, shattering his other gauntlet. He takes her circlet for her troubles, knocking the gold plated flowers off her head, and her smile shows teeth when she swings for him. The openings she flashes him are fake, the openings he shows her the same, a lifetime of wartime forcing his feet faster, stronger, Areadbhar roaring in his ears, sounding like ocean, sounding like life.

He breaks her left pauldron when she twists around, receiving his blow against it rather than her chest, taking the moment to slam the hilt of her blade against his stomach, knocking him breathless. He swallows his winces and his blood at once, swinging Areadbhar into her right calf, cutting through the flesh. She yells when he does so, something that could be a moment of weakness, if she did not take the same moment to thrust her sword upward, very nearly missing his neck.

Her sword cuts into his legs, searing whips of red crosses drawing upward where his armor has been broken and torn. Areadbhar wears into her heavy arms, the decorative fabrics she wears torn, the glistening gold shattered. She lunges between his arms and aims upward, he swings wide and aims downward. He pants and she breathes.

The Blaiddyd crest explodes from within him when he slams the Queen of Almyra against the floor.

Dimitri is almost grateful Linhardt is not here to bear witness to the way she recoils from the ground, a haunted doll cursed alive. Her sword has shattered, unable to take the strength of a full crest, of a heroes’ relic worn by a descendent. He gasps, watching her bring her hands up, wondering if she will draw a dagger, a bow, a second blade. Wondering if she will use just her fists, to twist his hair and snap his neck.

Instead, Tiana lowers her left hand, uses her right to comb the hair out of her face, and smiles.

“Good job,” she says in Fodlan, and then shouts a string of words too fast for him to follow. Their audience roars, surely some happy, surely some not, though none more important than the man who winks at his wife, raising his cup. The quiet comes as quickly as the cheers did, silencing all as he stands to his full height with all the dignity of a king.

He has a sword strapped to his waist too.

“Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd,” Almyra’s King says, and it is only then that Dimitri realizes the man’s Fodlan is perfect, precise, carefully measured to adopt a Kingdom accent.

“Congratulations.”

He swallows against the cheers, feeling blood trickle from his cheeks.

-

The feast that accompanies the ceremony is grander than almost all those Dimitri has ever witnessed. Food seems to never run out, far unlike the situation that threatened Fodlan and sent him running. Barrels of ale spill into other barrels, seafood stuffed with meat stuffed with vegetables, fruit platters piled higher than even Areadbhar’s length.

Speaking of, Almyran children love Areadbhar. He’s had to stop them from running off with it twice now.

“You’re doing amazing!” Hilda cheers, knocking their drinks together. Nader joins in, laughing, smacking Dimitri’s shoulders with a warmth of an almost uncle.

“Indeed! Before you know it, we’ll have to have a city wide wedding!” Nader winks, past drunk, and Hilda joins in his laughter.

“Ooh, really? Dimitri, you hear that! You have to win!”

“I-I’m certainly going to do my best.”

“Of course you are! Who knew you had it in you? I did!” Dimitri manages a smile at Nader, though the man slips away before long, enticed by the promise of a drinking competition. He’s a little surprised when Hilda follows, though her smile is crooked in a way that sends shivers up his spine. Whatever plan she’s thought up of, he’s sure Claude would delight in.

His mother might enjoy it as well, if her soft eyes overseeing the feast is any indication. She catches Dimitri’s eyes with a smile, beckoning him over. He blinks, surprise taking him once again at the familiar green hair poking out from her side.

“Professor?” He echoes, and this time Byleth nods in greeting.

“You did well,” Byleth praises, and Dimitri cannot help but duck his head, familiar pleased embarrassment flooding through him. He is no longer a student, but Byleth teaches them all nonetheless, title or not.

“Byleth was telling me stories about you and Claude,” Tiana coos, every bit a gossiping mother nursing her wine.

“Stories?” Dimitri echoes, hesitant, and he regrets it immediately when Tiana and Byleth’s eyes grow vicious. “Um, never mind, I don’t think I’ll be much help.”

“Nonsense,” Tiana laughs, a tiger in human skin. Her hand tightens around Dimitri’s arm, pulling him closer, pinching harder than he can recall from today’s afternoon. His brows fly up at the red mark left behind, questioning, but the smile she greets him with is only teeth. “Tell me about the day you met my son.”

_I didn’t know it was possible for mom to like anybody from Fodlan. Is there something in your bloodline you’re not telling me, Mitya? Some sort of special Riegan attractive trait I should be aware of?_

_I’m kidding. Maybe. Only partially._

_It makes sense mom would love you. I mean, you’re_ you _. Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who said you wanted to ~~mar wed marry~~ spend our time together._

_… Don’t laugh at your fiancé, you jerk._

_It’s only been a week, but it feels like forever already. My own bed has never been less inviting. My own bed! Do you know how many pillows I have? I have so many pillows._

_I heard you’re not sleeping very well. Mom knows a good spiced milk recipe; you should ask her about it. You know, now that you’re besties and all._

_This one isn’t a joke. Seriously, ask her for it._

_You’re the one who won the right to call her mama. I’m proud of you, Mitya. I knew you could do it._

_Your fiancé,_

_Khalid_

_PS – You’re very loud sometimes. I love you too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Tiana. Can you tell that I love Tiana? I do. I love this woman. I am forever mad we don't get to see her if you do the unthinkable to Claude. Too powerful for fe3h
> 
> The second trial is strength~ There's a lot of HCs about Claude's parents and I personally see them as caring but negligent. They run a nation, with many who despise the king's wife and her home country, and they don't seem to have time for their children. It's not because they don't love Claude, but rather because they love him too much to coddle him, having to instead pave a path for him to survive on.  
> I think Claude's parents would be a righteous storm if their son actually died. Missing? Whatever, he's probably on an incognito mission off doing who knows. Dead? Like actually dead-dead, body found and identified? Fury wouldn't even begin to cover the topic.
> 
> Dimitri has some... mixed feelings on his feelings for claude. He's overthinking things, which might be helpful for the next trial!


	3. Man of Mind

_Dearest fiancé,_

_I’ve heard quite the few rumors from Hilda about the dastardliest things you’ve done now that I’m not allowed to see you. What’s this about you and the head maid? Pally? Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking! How would Lysithea feel if she knew you were using poor Pally to get extra sweets from the kitchen._

_Aha, you were nervous just now, weren’t you?_

_Mama has been telling me about your work. It pains me to say I won’t be very helpful moving forward—no one has ever bested her in combat before. Very sexy of you, Mitya._

_She says I need to assist with the third trial. ~~I’ll let you know~~_

_I know what I’m doing for the trial. I can’t tell you. It would be unfair._

_No._

_I won’t tell you. I’m sorry Mitya, but this matters to me more than anything else. I need to know this truth._

_Fold up this letter. Don’t read it until the trial has passed. Mama will tell me the result._

_I trust you._

The journey to Almyra’s capital is slated to take two weeks. Hilda sees them off with eyes that promise future meddling, despite Claude’s laughter and attempts to bribe her to do otherwise. Even Holst cannot hold onto his scowl at the Almyran army who come to pick them up; certainly not, when Dimitri leans in to kiss Claude to the cheer of a foreign troupe.

It’s almost easy to forget their purpose when Dimitri can wake up to the waft of spices unheard of, Claude humming as he boils rice and vegetables in a small painted pot. They live on wyvern back, the heat in the day unbearable, and yet Dimitri finds he has never felt more at home.

“Mama came up with the whole thing,” Claude groaned over fresh bread and fried shrimp. Dimitri had raised an eyebrow, smiling over his own meal, Almyran chatter rolling over them. He could nearly tune out the voices, focusing on Claude’s alone.

“The trials?” Dimitri asked, earning a frosty nod. Claude turned away from him, obvious, lips pulled into a grimace.

Something had come over Claude that day they sat on wyvern back and crossed the border. There was no physical change, no donning of new colors, nor armor, but Claude had _changed_. Had smiled a little wider, had spoken a little freer, and danced with Dimitri a little harder. He joked with the Almyran troops with the same edge Dimitri recognized in Fodlan, but it was tinged with something nostalgic. Something that felt almost familial.

Claude kissed him differently here. Soft, and needing, and not at all like in war, where it felt like every day was their last.

They take their time here. Undressing, not for a wild chase, not for a forgotten romance. Sitting in the nude in the hot afternoons, resting after lunch, doing nothing but talking. Playing with each other’s hair. Kissing, just to kiss.

Laughing, just to laugh.

He watched Claude take a bite of his bread, content humming filling their corner, and wondered how he could ever have walked a separate path.

“They’re dumb,” Claude said, returning to the topic at hand. Dimitri had nodded before the words even registered, then sputtered, earning Claude’s amused gaze.

“They are troublesome,” he corrected, shaking his head. “But don’t you find it romantic? If nothing else, isn’t it proof of how much your mother loves your father?”

“Ew,” Claude laughed, wrinkling his nose, petering away when Dimitri had leaned in to capture those quirked lips. They had kissed, and they had kissed, and they had kissed, until the men waiting for them grew tired of them and whistled for their wyverns to rise.

“You won’t be so excited when you have to actually do them,” Claude had warned, and Dimitri had kissed his cheek.

“I don’t know that,” Dimitri smiled. “It would be worth it to marry you.”

-

Claude’s father is nothing like Claude.

Whereas the Queen of Almyra shares Claude’s eyes and his smile, his knives and his gestures, the King of Almyra betrays nothing of his intentions. At first glance, Dimitri had thought _that_ was the similarity; that Claude had learned his slippery cleverness from his father. Or perhaps it was his natural charisma, the kind that sweeps the room when he opens his mouth, and even if Dimitri cannot understand all the words the king says he knows enough to be cowed.

“He’s nicer than mom,” Claude had said, and though Dimitri does not fear the king will cut this head off in his sleep he instead fears the king will behead him in public instead.

Professor Byleth takes the words in stride, doling out chamomile and sweet jams from Fodlan. Those Almyran sweets are been nothing but fantastic in his time here, Dimitri finds himself hungry for the taste of home, even if it’s just the comfort of knowing something familiar.

“You sound nervous,” Byleth says, crooking an eyebrow. They’re amused, enough to be evident on their face, and Dimitri chooses to take another bite of a bun rather than dignify them with a response they already know.

“You were the second best student in your class.” He’s aware. “You took to commanding and strategizing for an entire Kingdom rather quickly.” He’s aware. “A test of knowledge should mean nothing to you.” He’s very aware.

“But you’re still nervous,” Byleth says, not accusational, nor mocking. Just a fact.

“I am,” Dimitri admits, playing with the rim of his cup. It’s a manner he was trained out of early on, but at some point he had picked it up once more. A tell a king should not have.

“Claude’s mother approached me first,” Dimitri explains, the memory still vivid in his head. He had thought she would descend from the stairs in an evening gown belonging to that of a woman of the church.

There is a hole in the wall where her dagger flew, narrowly missing his cheek. She had brought with her thunder and lightning with her grin.

“But the king has told you nothing,” Byleth summarizes, Dimitri nods, correct as always. The tension between him and the king has been palpable in the walls of the castle, noticed even by the maids who tend to Dimitri’s room, asking after him as though he is an esteemed Almyran warrior rather than a Fodlan man who had come to steal away their prince.

Dimitri bites his lip, forcing himself to take in a mouthful of tea, holding the scalding liquid in his mouth. He’s growing bitter in his nervousness.

If Byleth notices, they don’t say a word.

“Has Claude told you anything?” How could he, locked away until Dimitri can break forth the spell to see Claude once more?

“He refuses to,” Dimitri confesses, the words rotten within his mouth. They drip of envy and hurt born from confusion. Hilda has met with Claude, her eyes brimming with curiosity when she entered and brimming with laughter when she exited. She had bumped into Dimitri, her giggles dying in her throat when she did nothing more than pat his shoulders.

“What did he say?”

“He told me not to tell you. But even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t.”

“It must be something personal, then,” Byleth inquires, their eyes wandering from Dimitri to the table and back. “King Azhari must have told you something about the trials.”

“He said I should study,” Dimitri says, rolling up his side of the tablecloth to pick up the pile of books the Almyran Royal Librarians had sent to his room. Byleth raises an eyebrow, mouth quirked upwards, as Dimitri makes a show of flipping through. A history of Almyra, a basic guide to Almyran culture, a particularly tensely written book describing their neighbors to the West; anything and everything Dimitri could not have known in Fodlan.

“Honestly, I think I’ve read almost everything available in Fodlan tongue. And the only things I can read in Almyran are children’s stories,” Dimitri sighs, pushing aside the top titles to reveal a small array of thin and colorful books. Byleth squints, making out the words spelling out “Lam’s Fortune” and “The Headless Comes Out At Night.”

“They seem useful,” they quip, smiling when Dimitri sends them a flat look for their trouble.

They aren’t so much useful as interesting. The stories he grew up hearing in Faerghus were mostly about knights protecting princesses, and the occasional ferocious wyvern stopping the knight from claiming the princess and being crowned king. The ones in Almyra are darker in spirit, speaking of stolen children and sleepless nights; one in particular speaks about a woman who lost her family because of her obsession with war. She didn’t trust her family, and so they couldn’t trust her, and despite the sacrifices she made for them she still ended up alone.

The ghosts that sang in the story felt eerily familiar. Dimitri hadn’t finished the tale, tucking it away for better studies.

“I don’t think a test of knowledge from _Claude_ is going to be about children’s stories,” Dimitri pauses, worrying his bottom lip. “Do you?”

The worst thing about being alone is the doubt. It clings to the back of his head, crawling inward until it lingers long after the words have faded into nothing. Byleth meets Dimitri’s eyes, neither hesitation nor worry in their gaze.

“Would Claude want you to know them?”

No.

“Probably not.” It’s low, half-bitten out. He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t know. “Shouldn’t I know them? Claude likes hearing about Fodlan stories, I’m sure he’d like it if I knew about Almyran stories.” Claude would appreciate that, Dimitri knows, but he wouldn’t test him on it. “Maybe he wants me to talk about foreign policy. We’ve already started clearing the trade routes, and that’s important to him.” It’s important to Dimitri too.

_Claude_ ’ _s_ important to Dimitri.

“I don’t know what Claude wants.”

Dimitri bows his head, defeated before the trial has even begun. He’s aware of the pitiful sight he makes, incoherent and mad over something as mundane as a cultural quiz, but Claude’s written words screech in his head. It’s important to Claude. This truth he’s looking for—he wants Dimitri to supply it.

All he has are history textbooks and tea.

“I don’t want to let him down,” Dimitri murmurs, pressing his lips against the warm tea. He’s hiding, blatantly so, and Byleth allows him that much. “I’m overthinking things, but I don’t know how to stop. I’m worried I won’t think enough and get it wrong, or that I’ll think too much and get it wrong.”

“Dimitri,” Byleth interrupts, reaching over the table to place a hand on his forearm. “Why are you doing these trials?”

“H-huh?” Dimitri stammers, mouth sliding open. “Professor, did Hilda not tell you…? Claude’s mother did this to prove her worth to marry King Azhari. If I want to marry him, I,” warmth begins to creep in, his chest beating as the memories resurface. Claude had been so adamant against the idea, but Dimitri had never seen him happier than when he had asked about marriage, the trials, and about coming to Almyra with Claude.

About making their relationship more than politics.

“I’m doing this to marry Claude,” Dimitri says, exhaling smoothly. Byleth smiles, the slightest twitch of their lips, raising their hand to pat Dimitri’s cheek. He blinks at them only to receive a wider grin.

“I wouldn’t overthink it, then,” Byleth advises. “I have a feeling Claude wants to marry you too.”

“Professor, you always know what to say.” Dimitri looks over the books crowding his side of the table, beginning to pile them back up to the floor. He pauses on the children’s books, flipping through them once more.

“Going to study, then?” Byleth asks, gathering up their empty tea equipment. Dimitri smiles their way, shaking his head.

“I don’t think Claude will ask me about these,” he admits, parsing through the pages as quickly as his Almyran can handle. “But I think he’ll be happy to know I took the time to read about them.”

-

Time slipped through Dimitri’s fingertips like sands on a beach, cast away into the waves to never return the same. The debates never seem to change, the arguments cresting on nothing and fading into something resentful.

He had thought he had a moon.

Claude leaves in a week.

“You’re pretty late.” To say Hilda at his doorway was a surprise is an understatement. Dimitri raised an eyebrow, careful, wondering if it was too late to retreat back into his room. Hilda caught the motion just as quickly, latching onto his eye with a wicked smile.

“Dimitri,” she purred, every bit the tactician Claude and Byleth are, “why don’t we go for a walk?”

A walk, it turned out, had meant nothing more than a quarter circle around the monestary before they happened upon a well set up tea table under the gondola. The very same one Dimitri knows to be Byleth’s favorite, where they host all their birthday teas. Hilda ushered him down into that same seat, smiling still as she fell into hers.

“So,” she started, waiting for him to pour her a cup before continuing.

“Yes, Hilda?” He had asked, looking at the table. Chocolate covered biscuits, strawberry jam and scones, and skinny slices of honey crackers. Certainly a spread meant for someone else.

He sipped at his tea, smelling lavender.

“So,” she repeated, leaning in close. She reminded him of Sylvain, his false politeness, and though he had shuffled the idea away with haste the resemblance had felt uncanny.

“Yes, Hilda?” He repeated once more. The chocolate melted in his mouth, leaving behind the sharp snap of the biscuit. Not his favorite snack, perhaps, but one he was still fond of.

“Ugh, you’re no fun,” Hilda had groaned. Dimitri briefly considered the idea that she and Sylvain _had_ swapped bodies through some means. “I’m asking about Claude! Have you asked him yet?”

“Ask him what?” His voice had betrayed him, growing high and strained as familiar warmth bloomed along his neck and cheeks. An impulse reaction nowadays to the name of his love—even Byleth had refused to relent from the topic, asking Dimitri more than once after meetings end to “settle” their business.

He could only wish for it to be so simple.

“Ooh, is that a _blush_ , Dima?” Hilda had cooed, her eyes alight once more with Claude’s nickname slipping off her tongue. He had averted his eyes, obvious, naïve in the simplest ways, and she had cackled in delight.

“It is! So you have been thinking about it!”

“I have never denied that,” Dimitri had corrected. How could he deny it when it was clear as day to everyone who he met, including the object of his affections himself?

He wanted to walk with Claude, to sleep with Claude, to wake with Claude. He wanted time to unwind, to rewind, to gift him back those wasted years agonizing alone, a frenzied beast of a man, and find that light that guided him forward. He wanted to claim Claude as his, place a ring on his finger, and have him in one place.

How could he want to cage his lover, when Claude only has eyes for the sky?

“I don’t think he wants to stay with me.” It’s a confession that has boiled under his skin for moons, unrelenting, crashing against him as the clock ticks down. Easy to ignore as grains of sands early on, but now that it’s become a desert he cannot look past the dry scrape of his throat as he swallows.

“Why not?” Hilda had demanded, nearly breaking the table with the force of her hands rocking it. It scraped against the floor, noisy, their tea sloshing in their cups.

Dimitri had not answered. Could not vocalize those words.

“Have you even asked him?” Hilda asked, quiet, and he had drawn his brows together and sighed. An answer without one.

“He loves you,” Hilda repeated, convinced. Dimitri had thought the same.

“Not the way I do.”

“He does,” insistent, demanding. She sat back down, huffing righteously, a dangerous narrowing of her eyes. “I know he does. He doesn’t want to leave your side, ever.”

“He has to,” Dimitri said, as much true for Claude as it was for him.

“Why?”

Why, indeed. Why make the judgement of a land the burden for one man to bare, their shoulders hunched and broken from the weight of a history of sins? Why contort the wants of a nation into a list borne from noble greed, disguising itself as good when it is nothing more than poison that starves the land? Why draw lines in the soil, dividing people by people, sending one half to rot in the ocean and the other to choke on the air?

Why must he know that his time with Claude counts down with every passing day?

“Because he is a king,” Dimitri had sighed, had closed his eyes and recounted every dispute, every statement, that Claude had said while smiling. “Because I am a king as well.”

Because fate would be so unkind as to bring them together only to force them apart.

“Well, ugh!” Hilda groans, tossing her hair back with a huff. “You two are so dramatic! Why can’t you be kings together?”

“It’s not that easy!” Dimitri argues, combing through his own hair. A habit he picked up from Felix, who picked it up from Ingrid.

“Of course it is!” Hilda pauses to roll her eyes, peering over the distance. She makes a short grumbling noise, turning from side to side before growling and turning to face Dimitri fully once more, a fire burning in her eyes. “Look, I’m only going to say this once. So listen carefully!”

“Claude doesn’t trust a lot of people, and neither do I, okay? There’s a lot of bad, _bad_ guys in the world, and if anyone of them hurt Claude I’d rip their faces off!” Dimitri nods, watching Hilda smack the table hard enough to jostle their tea cups. For once, she doesn’t seem to notice, outrage taking her still. “But he trusts _you_ , Dima, so I do too.”

“You shouldn’t” and “Why” garble together in his mouth. Hilda tuts him before he can even open his lips, leaning over to squish her hand against him.

“He loves you, that stupid stubborn idiot.” Even as she insults Claude, Hilda’s tone is fond. She sinks back into her seat, seeming to realize her tea spillage only just now, flushing as she hastens to clean it with a napkin. “I just want to make sure you love him too.”

“I want to do it right,” Dimitri admits, soft. Hilda beams.

“Tell him that, Your dense Majesty!”

-

If one were to ask Dimitri to describe a trial of knowledge, he would picture a grand library, or perhaps a roundtable surrounded by glass depictions of their history. There would be at least three judges in flowing cloaks concealing their faces as they brought forward a forbidden map, undiscernible notes to anyone who had seen it before. A small sand vial would be flipped, leaving competitors only a matter of minutes the map’s hidden meaning: a discovery of long-lost gold!

Well, perhaps his imagination got the best of him. Either way, he had expected the royal attendants to walk him to the king’s council room, or perhaps a long hall, where he could expect to be judged. Nader had told him his fight with the queen was well anticipated, and even though it’s been weeks since he had won the duel there were servants who still bowed and congratulated him.

It’s a surprise when Nader takes him from the servant’s hands, smiling none-too-joyfully.

“Is something wrong?” Dimitri asks, following Nader’s paced steps down a skinny corridor. The long rows of arched windows that allow the sun’s light to stream into the halls are gone here, instead closed off by deeply set bricks. His hand squeezes, wishing for a spear to protect himself against a potential intruder. No, not him.

“Is Claude okay?” Dimitri presses forward, turning to catch Nader’s eyes. But the man averts his gaze, the long tassels of his headwear blocking Dimitri from getting a proper look.

“Nothing like that. We’ve just got a strange request from the kid.” A strange request? From Claude? Dimitri exhales, relief and anticipation swirling within his chest.

“He would not be my lover if he wasn’t always surprising me,” Dimitri admits. He cards his fingers together, now, gazing off even as Nader’s feet seem to quicken. The sun’s light is far behind them now, a glowing halo by the entrance they’ve left behind. “Were the trials not public affairs?”

“They normally are. But it’s best to keep this one quiet.”

“Why?” Amusement passes by Nader’s face as he turns to Dimitri at last.

“Are you always this bad at digging? No wonder kiddo likes you.” Dimitri flattens his lips, turning away himself. He’s not pouting. “It’s not that big a deal. Usually the king would be the one to determine the subject to quiz about, but since Khalid had a request we’re keeping it hush-hush.”

“Is it so strange that Claude would want to quiz his father and I?”

“Not that part. Ah, well, I like you, kiddo. Might as well say it.” Nader sighs, scratching his head. “No one’s ever gotten past Miss Tiana. And Khalid’s never bothered taking any of these proposals seriously before. If you fail, it’d be bad for the next person to know what to expect.”

If he fails.

“If I don’t fail, then,” Dimitri stretches the words out, careful and stiff. “It wouldn’t matter, right?”

“Where,” Nader laughs, “was this confidence last week? I saw you pacing in the library like a man hanging off a death sentence.”

What rebuttal he has is cut off by a sudden turning into a thinner corridor, enough so that he has to walk in a straight line behind Nader and keep an eye out for the ceiling. He ducks when Nader does, trying to peer past the other man probably to catch the edges of light through stained glass ahead. A door, strangely fitted against the narrow walkway, like a hidden exit in an escape route should one be in danger.

Oh. No wonder.

“Here we go, kid. King Ahzari awaits.”

The stained doors part to reveal a small circular room with glass tiles set into the ceiling. There is a single small tea table in the center, already set up with a basket of breads and crackers, and two gold rimmed cups of tea. King Azhari sits on one end, nodding to Dimitri.

“Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri answers, eyes raking over the table. No books, nor papers, nor quills to write with. There’s no one else in the room besides them and Nader, who pulls out his seat. Dimitri thanks him quietly as he sits.

No map, no men in cloaks, and no secrets.

Just… tea.

“Delicious.” Dimitri tests the waters, sipping from his cup. The king follows suit, downing his, chuckling.

“It is,” Azhari gestures to the bread, “have you tried our loaves? We’re quite proud of our bakers here.” So he’s heard, and tasted. Dimitri breaks off a square, less than half, though it earns him nothing from the king.

Unlike Tiana, his steel wall is no armor. King Azhari himself is steel, painted with smiles and jewels and good wishes, but steel nonetheless. Tiana had given him a chance. Azhari gives him nothing.

Dimitri wonders if he should be angry for it.

“Has your son spoken to you about this trial?” He says instead, watching Azhari smear peach jam onto his slice, and mimicking the movement. Mimicry, flattery of the highest regard to Fodlan nobles; yet it falls flat to Azhari’s chews. Dimitri pours him tea. Azhari swallows.

“He hasn’t. Perhaps he’ll manage to surprise us,” Azhari chuckles. “Here I was hoping for a proper battle with you. Few can handle Tiana,” his eyes narrow, “fewer can earn her favor.”

“I’d love to spar,” Dimitri answers, careful, slipping, “provided we have the time.”

“We always have time. But let’s get this over with, shall we? Nader, can you bring her?”

Her?

Azhari flags the air before the doors shut behind Nader’s footsteps, leaving them together. The sound of his retreating footsteps are barely audible, even though all that separates them are glass panels.

“Has Claude invited someone to come?” Azhari chuckles, dull and flat.

“My boy? He wouldn’t invite anyone.” Progress, Dimitri thinks, when Azhari slides the ends of their loaf onto his plate, apple jelly and chocolate on top. “He’s got us a referee. Thinks I might cheat.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Dimitri insists, proper.

“Oh,” Azhari interrupts, “I wouldn’t say that.” His smile is all teeth again; eyes void as the sounds of footsteps begin to echo again. “I appreciate your compliment.”  
Liar, Dimitri thinks, and wonders how exactly Claude’s clever tongue could come from a man who tells such bold-faced ones, laced with nothing but pride and pleasure at his own strength.

“Hello, boys!”

“Hilda?”

Sure enough, familiar pink hair peeks out from beneath an oversized hat. Hilda grins at she waves with her left hand, the other tucked behind her back. It’s suspicious, too much so not to be intended, and Azhari reclines in his seat in her approach.

“Are we ready, then?” Azhari prompts, gesturing to the table. There’s not enough room for a textbook, much less two, papers, and quills. Hilda hums, swaying from side to side, though her smile hasn’t dimmed.

“We are indeed ready! Ta-da!”

Her right hand comes out to reveal two skinny vials, the glass as long as Dimitri’s middle finger. They’re clear, and empty, topped off with wooden corks. She hands them out gleefully, and only then does Dimitri realize that rather than empty, the vial is full of a clear liquid. Thin enough that it’s practically see through, and full enough that there are almost no bubbles to be seen as Azhari warily turns it to and fro.

“Is this poison?” Dimitri asks in Azhari’s stead, raising a careful brow. Hilda’s smile doesn’t waver, revealing nothing as she pulls aside her robe to pull out three slivers of paper and two quills, handing out one each. The last paper is folded in half, and she waves it in the air above them.

“That’s for _me_ to know, and you two to figure out!” Hilda winks with her words, backing up and unfurling the paper. Her eyes dart from side to side before she reads it off. “Here are two vials of the same substance, exactly identical. Each person has five minutes to figure out what it’ll do to a person if swallowed. You can test it however you like. On this paper, Hilda, that’s me, has the solution. She’ll reveal it if you’re right! And… ah,” her words break into a high giggle, shaking her head.

“Never mind. I wasn’t supposed to read that yet, but, ah, he’s _so_ cheesy,” Hilda finishes with a twinkle in her eye.

“All his thought,” Azhari sighs, eyelids dimming, “and poison is his solution. Truly his mother’s child.” Hilda grimaces, though it’s the warmest tone Dimitri’s heard from Azhari yet. Perhaps his love was hidden behind a similar veil of steal as Claude’s mother.

Or perhaps he couldn’t care less, raising the vial to the light with disinterested eyes.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got five minutes to figure it out—go ahead and swallow it if you want,” Hilda huffs. Dimitri stifles a laugh at her not-so-subtle threat; Azhari gives her no such attention, quietly musing over the vial.

Dimitri raises his vial, uncapping it before sniffing at it. Odorloss. If he were to put a droplet on his tongue, even if he had retained his taste buds, he would swear it would be tasteless just as well. Clear. Undetectable.

It would be like Claude to disguise the deadliest poisons into water.

“What do you think it is?” Azhari’s voice startles Dimitri. It’s the first he’s initiated a conversation between them, and to be during their time limit no less; Dimitri swallows, capping his vial once more. Azhari’s paper, he realizes, is already folded and put away with the quill on top.

“I’m not sure,” he replies, tense. His shoulders threaten to rise despite himself, cornered and cagey in his seat. Azhari’s eyes roll over him, cool, indifferent, even as they crinkle in his own amusement.

“Really? Surely you can figure out more than that. Fodlan has an interesting way of teaching; if my son were to try to trouble me, he _would_ use his mother’s methods to do so.” Though Azhari’s words are flippant, they aren’t angry. He’s been rather neutral about everything: the trade routes, the borders, Dimitri and Claude.

It’s as though they hardly even matter, just pawns in the world he overlooks.

“I don’t have a lot of experience with poisons,” Dimitri admits, frustration beginning to bubble. Neither Hilda nor Byleth had hinted anything about poisons, nor herbs, nor anything remotely similar to the topic at hand. He hadn’t expected an advantage, but the sweat gathering on his palms betrays his confidence.

“Have you tried swallowing and seeing what happens?” Dimitri’s brow twitches at the goading, eyes darting from Azhari to Hilda. She shrugs in response, gesturing to the clock at the wall. Three minutes have passed, and he’s yet to write a thing.

“I have not. I haven’t deduced its lethality yet,” Dimitri replies, brisk, eyes back on his vial as he tilts it side by side. Nothing happens, no change in color, no switch in viscosity. No hints.

“I would gladly die by my wife’s hands,” Azhari’s eyes twinkle as he says the words, heavy with his confidence. “You intend to marry my son, and you cannot even trust your life in his hands?”

“You’re his father,” Dimitri thinks darkly, the words dancing on his tongue. “You’re his father, and you don’t trust him at all.” They don’t make it past his lips, thinned shut, but Azhari laughs nonetheless. Amused, and self-righteous in his amusement.

A man spoiled by his own victories. Even now, he plays with the vial as though an afterthought, the quill abandoned. The idea of being incorrect hasn’t seemed to even enter his mind.

Tiana fought him with the fury of a mother left behind. Azhari hasn’t even considered him as an opponent.

“Well, it’s alright. Maybe next time,” Azhari laughs, folding his hands. “I’d love to hear about the Fodlan king who couldn’t give up his love for Almyra! Ah,” his voice fades away, quiet enough for only them at the table to overhear. “Who would have thought little Khalid would take after his father in romance?”

Dimitri’s eyes widen at the whispered words. Azhari gives him no room to reply, cutting him off with the same bold grin.

“I’d focus if I were you. You’re running out of time.”

Dimitri takes in a shaky inhale, uncapping the vial again. Nothing, no odor, no taste, surely, no magical changing of color or temperature upon exposure to the air. His eyes dart to the clock and back—forty seconds. He wishes it were a hint, a clue, something to point him in the direction Claude’s father apparently sniffed out seconds in. All he can think about are children’s stories: those tall tales about princesses and knights, wild wyverns and the Goddess, and then those dark reminders of doom awaiting those untrusting.

_“You cannot even trust your life in his hands?”_

Oh.

Dimitri’s eyes dart back up to King Azhari, but the man has turned away, sipping his tea as though unwinding under the Almyran sun rather than in a stuffed away corner room hidden behind tunnels and curves. Hilda waves at him, pointing to the clock, mimicking writing with her other hand. He smiles, nodding, picking up the quill.

Twenty seconds left.

“King Azhari,” Dimitri speaks as he folds the paper in half, placing it by his saucer in mimicry of the man before him. Azhari turns his way, mouth smoothed out again.

“You are an arrogant man. You treated my nation’s request with respect, which I appreciate, but you’ve never given _me_ respect as Fodlan’s King, of your neighboring country.” Hilda moves, a pink blur from his peripherals, but he pays her no heed as Azhari snorts. Dimitri raises a hand, shaking his head. “Please, I would prefer not to argue. I simply have an argument I wish to make.”

Ten seconds.

“My strength is not decided by my nation’s armors, but their happiness. And though Fodlan is meek now, she will not be for long,” Dimitri exhales, slow, raising the vial. “I suggest you watch her grow, not as a threat, but as a friend. A daughter in law, even. After all,” Dimitri pops the cork open to Hilda’s gasp behind him, tilting the vial to his lips. His eyes refuse to move from Azhari’s own, challenging, wicked in their amusement as the liquid hits his tongue.

“I would gladly die by your son’s hands.”

It tastes like nothing. He swallows.

“Ummm, times up! Guys!” Hilda’s words are drowned out by the heavy laughter that bursts from Azhari’s mouth, echoing in their chamber as his hand slaps his stomach, shaking with his amusement.

“How do you feel?” Azhari asks, eyes twinkling with mirth. “Khalid is capable of killing a wyvern far greater than you with his tricks. Have you appointed the next in line already, to die on foreign lands?”

“Fine. Nothing is off.” Dimitri tests out a hand, rolling his wrist, but truly nothing is strange.

“A lucky gamble, perhaps. Girl, what has the child written?” Hilda twitches at the call, but brandishes the paper with little more than a roll of her eyes.

“O-kay! Well, it’s been more than five minutes, and Claude wants me to read, um,” her eyes scan the page, mouth moving silently until she finds the right line. “Right! Here we go:

“The topic of this test of knowledge is Khalid, son of King Azhari, heir to her Majesty Almyra, the land of Wyverns and Starlight, and his history of poison work. Both participants will be given a vial created by the topic, and have to assess the contents using their knowledge of Khalid and their relationships with him. Only someone with knowledge of Khalid’s childhood knows the depth of his knowledge of poisons, and how lethal they can be.” Hilda’s words trail off, stilling as Azhari turns over his paper, revealing “death” as his answer.

“A slow death is still a death. Surely he doesn’t intend to have us wait until his friend drops dead?” Azhari gestures to Dimitri.

“I don’t intend to die,” Dimitri answers, turning over his own sheet.

“It’s blank?”

“Nothing. It’s not a poison at all,” Dimitri challenges, turning to Hilda. “Is that the answer?”

Hilda’s mouth curls into a slow smile as she reads on.

“But only someone close enough to Khalid to know his personal relationships,” she pauses, grinning fully now as she turns to Dimitri, “would know he would never poison his father or his lover.”

“The correct answer is nothing.”

His exhale comes out of him like spring sun seeping through winter clouds, bright and overwhelming in its warmth. Dimitri turns to Hilda, Azhari, and back, before staring at his paper.

The correct answer is nothing.

“I got it right. I got it _right._ I got—Hilda, I mean,” Dimitri’s words run into each other, blinking frantically. “The topic of poisons, really, I didn’t know, did you—you couldn’t, I.”

“Well.”

The scrape of the chair is enough to break through his words as Azhari stands to his full height, kicking away from the tea table. It’s comically small once he’s rolled his shoulders back, and only standing does Dimitri see the intricate embroideries at the edges of his tunic. It’s fastened into his pants, thick and a sea blue, in a tuck he’s only seen in Fodlan.

“King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd of Her Blessed Fodlan.” Even Hilda is quiet, her mouth parting in shock as Azhari speaks. The words roll off in perfect Fodlan tongue, succinct, familiar, and his mouth quirks indulgently. “Thank you for your interest in my son.”

“I’ll see myself out.” Even his steps seem to ring out against the tiled floor as Azhari pushes forward the doors. The narrow hallway seems even smaller in comparison to his shoulders, sweeping as the doors slide shut behind him with a click.

“Did that just happen?”

“Um, yes!” Hilda squeals, delight sparkling as she hops over to give Dimitri a hug. “You just did it! Goddess, I didn’t know _how_ you were going to pull it off with just seconds left—you gave me such a heart attack!”

“You’re not the only one,” Dimitri laughs, clutching his own chest. His hand comes away wet, sweaty, and he slows his breaths. He hadn’t realized how worked up he got in those final few precious seconds, tense and unknowing, yet certain in his conviction if nothing else.

“How did you know? Oh, did Claude give you a hint after all?” Hilda teases, swinging her arms side to side.

“No,” Dimitri admits, standing from his own chair. He gives the tea table one final look as he drags the chairs back into place, staring at the uncapped vial.

“I just remembered some stories about love.”

-

There is no ceremony for the third trial. No announcement of it, either, nor congratulations. The skinny hallway is covered as soon as they exit, and soon enough neither Dimitri nor Hilda can relocate it from the hundred other similarly painted panels along the hallway walls. If there are ridges hinting to their little trial spot, no one is truly certain.

All Dimitri knows is that King Azhari refuses to call him anything but “kid” despite his victory. The one-time usage of his full name, his title, and the respect that comes with it, has never returned.

It’s a little vexing how much he might prefer it that way.

“Did you know?” The stars above them are gorgeous, dots streaked across the sky as though painted by the Goddess’ own hands. It reminds Dimitri of a time when he was still young, hopeful beneath the dark voices that taunted him, clinging childishly to his professor. Though he’s grown into a king, he isn’t sure that childish wanting to follow will ever fully disappear from him. At the very least, Byleth doesn’t seem to mind.

“A little,” Byleth answers, shrugging their shoulder. “It wasn’t his idea.”

“I figured. Was it yours?” Dimitri bites back a laugh as Byleth blinks over to him, owlish. Claude wouldn’t be the type to outright ask Dimitri, nor anyone, for their loyalty. No, Dimitri thought fondly, huffing through his nose, Claude would orchestrate such subtle tricks and tests of loyalty, and would doubt the results even if met. The only thing that would make it through his skull would be more than an outright statement.

If he had died in that chamber, at least he would have died engaged.

“Stop that,” Byleth interrupts. Dimitri stifles his words; as always, his professor can read anyone. “It wasn’t mine, either.”

“Hilda?”

“Tiana.” Ah. The queen’s demeanor when he saw her after the trial, “bumping” into her in the halls, suddenly makes sense now. Her grin, vicious and indulgent, mirrored her husband’s so perfectly that he had only found it unnerving in the moment. Knowing the cause of her smile only seemed to bother him more.

“So Claude is the kind of person to listen to his mother, huh?” Dimitri shakes his head, smiling. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. I’m lucky that isn’t what he chose for the topic.” He pauses, waxing his fingers together.

“Did you think I would get it right?”

The stars glitter in the silence that descends between them, Byleth making a short humming noise as they turn their gaze upward. Dimitri waits, eyes glazing as exhaustion sets in. His sleep schedule had been admittedly worse than it should have been for a while, all a result of his time studying day in and out.

“Yes.” He sucks in a breath as Byleth answers, their smile a calming presence. “I did.”

“You hesitated,” Dimitri protests, “you were uncertain, right?”

“I hesitate because I would have failed. For a mercenary, poison is a fairly common topic. I would have never thought _Claude_ would make a non-poisonous poison,” Byleth chuckles. “But then I thought about it. What would you want? What would Claude want?”

“The answer to that would be marriage. Why wouldn’t you get it right?”

Dimitri blinks, slow, before his mouth parts into a laugh. He shakes his head, giggling, feeling light-hearted and dizzy all at once.

When his laughter runs out and the silence falls again, Dimitri finds himself wishing to see his lover.

Halfway there.

_I trust you._

_Did I worry you? I’ve heard of unfair and botched trials before, but I wonder if anyone would be as anxious as you must be. I can only hope papa hasn’t thrown you out of your room by now. If he has, I’ll have stern words with him._

_~~I don’t even know what to write. For once, I think I’m stuck.~~_

_~~The truth is~~_

_~~My mother~~_

_I’m sorry. It was a sudden thing to spring up, wasn’t it? Poison was never your strong suit, Mitya, and I don’t blame you for being afraid. I’m not as nice a person as you thought._

_~~Fodlan~~_

_This is probably goodbye. I loved you Mitya._

_~~Though it’s foolish~~ , I love you still._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, this took forever! I've fallen behind schedule due to irl work and another dmcl fic, but this is still being worked on I swear!  
> This chapter revolved all around the climax scene of Dimitri drinking the "poison". I knew that had to happen no matter what!  
> Something people don't often talk about is all the lord's bad parts. They're all more prideful than they'd like to admit, and kind stupidly annoying about it. I wanted to highlight Dimitri's upset with the king/claude's dad treatment of him as a guest while also having others note that Dimitri himself hasn't gone out of his way to really connect with the king either. As a prince, he's kind of gotten used to people doing certain things for him because of his status, even if he doesn't fully realize it!  
> For Claude, I wanted his weird pessimism to show through. Why's he got such a pure dream when he's so angy about himself?! Seriously kiddo, the fifth time someone shows they trust you is not a trick, gosh! He's not straightforward enough to get the answers he /really/ wants, and then he gets upset about not having them, so I think having pushy friends would do him some good.
> 
> Next time, Nader's time to shine~


	4. Man of Men

_Dearest,_

_I must confess I’ve rewritten this letter at least forty times now. At this rate, I may be single-handedly responsible for a paper shortage in Fodlan and Almyra alike._

_~~Could you forget what I wrote you last time?~~ Who am I kidding, you have it saved, don’t you? Don’t even deny it—I have my sources._

_~~What I wanted to say~~_

_~~I’m sorry for~~_

_I will not waste more paper. I think I’m going to have to start burning them to get around my room._

_I think I’ve fallen deeper than I ever thought possible. Is that alright?_

_I almost wish I didn’t let you convince me to do these stupid, ridiculous trials. I thought it was strange when mom did it and I think you are just as horrible. We could have been married weeks ago if you didn’t insist on going through with this! And now you have to deal with some ridiculous man to judge a public he no doubt has no understanding of._

_I just want to be married to you already._

_Is that so much to ask?_

Dimitri folds up the letter, tucking it into his pocket at the sound of a knock on his door. He’d been told in advance to clean up his room and prepare for his… guest. Inspector, or judge. However Byleth would like to put it.

“Kid?”

Dimitri’s lips twitch when Nader enters the room, balancing a tray of sweets and tea on it. A peacetime tradition made sweeter by the fact that Nader knows exactly how Dimitri likes his tea, and he stands gratefully to help carry it over.

“Good afternoon,” he greets, shaking his wrists in a greeting he’s come to familiarize as being an Almyran military symbol. Given Nader’s common usage of it, Dimitri had little idea it would be linked to any sort of military activity whatsoever. Then again, the man’s casual determination to maintain his friendly and positive personality despite his long and bloody war history was someone Dimitri respected from him.

Respects from him still, even if Nader is blowing on his hot fingers from the tea.

“You should have asked for help,” Dimitri manages, trying and failing to drive away the image of Annette sharing Nader’s exact mannerisms years ago. His smile breaks free, leaving him to hide his amusement behind his cup. “Would you like to wait for it to cool?”

“Isn’t that an affront to Fodlan mannerisms?” Nader scoffs, shaking his head as he downs it. Based off the unpleasant twist of his lips, that was _not_ his smartest strategy, and neither is his scarfing down a biscuit to chase away the burning heat. Nader coughs as he pours himself a second cup, raising a brow. “Well, kid?”

“I can assure you, t’s not an affront.” Not exactly, that is. Dimitri laughs as Nader waves his words away, sipping carefully at his own brew. There was no such thing as “too hot” tea in Faerghus, not when leaving a cup unprotected for a minute or two was enough for the chill to seep into the beverage.

“Right, right. Your tongues are made of out of steel and all that nonsense.” Nader laughs as he says it, eyes twinkling, but Dimitri swallows at the words. Unease begins to crawl within him, nervous, as Nader snaps a cracker in half with the same gentle regard as always. “Have you spoken to Khalid recently?”

“I haven’t,” Dimitri answers, honest, even as his heart yearns to complete the letter Claude’s sent his way. He never realized how powerful words can be, especially when written by a loved one.

“Really? And what about Hilda, has she told you anything?”

“She hasn’t,” then, gently, “am I right to assume that you…?”

Nader’s quiet is word enough. Dimitri swallows, suddenly full, nodding. His tongue rolls over the questions jumbled in his brain, considering; he decides on an easier topic, one they share.

“Claude said his mother was at fault for the trials? He seemed unhappy about them.” The silence broke with ease as Nader threw his head back in laughter at the words, cackling joyfully.

“Did he, now? Kiddo’s never liked participating in them, that’s for sure,” Nader chuckles, shaking his head. “Well, he’s right. Marriage was never really as much of a celebration as it is in Fodlan—it was about being strong, and love would come after, for the most part. Lots of Almyran folk still marry like that; the person you grew up friends with becomes your marriage partner because it’s easier than running around the empire looking for your ‘fated one’.”

“Even though the fairy tales are so romantic?”

“Ah, they’re romantic, but they’re about being strong,” Nader nods, humming. “Children gives people something to protect,” his eyes soften, hands folding together, “even if they’re not yours. Before Almyrans married, we grouped together instead. One person’s child was everyone’s child. In a way, we’re still like that.”

“Did the Queen change things?” Dimitri’s lips thin as Nader scratches his chin, mulling. “Being Fodlan… that must have been a hard development for the Almyran royal family.”

“She did,” Nader finalizes, “but not as much as you’re thinking.” He stretches his arms, wide, yawning almost lazily as the words pours out. “Tiana was a storm. Still is, that woman. Sheesh. Not a person would have thought her a Fodlan woman with that mouth.” Dimitri’s lips twitch at the backhanded compliment. “Traditionally, marriage was just a union of strong and like-minded people. All she did was take what was already there and make it an official ceremony.”

“Foreign courting presents only a noble could have, a joust to prove her strength, outpacing researchers to show her knowledge,” Nader hums, “meeting with the general for the right to fight for Almyra. Taking charge of the trade routes, and then sneaking Azrael out from his bedroom before the wedding could even be announced, so she could do it herself. Tiana’s always been crazy, but, well, we like that about her.”

“Did you like her too?” Dimitri coughs, stumbling over the words as he realizes how they came out. “N-not, not romantically, I just meant—um, as the general. Judging her! Like with me. That’s. That’s all.”

“You’d have to ask my senior how judging her was,” Nader answers with a crooked grin. “But no, I didn’t like her.” Dimitri blinks upwards, slow, surprise evident on his face.

“You didn’t?”

“I liked her son,” Nader corrects. “I think all of Almyra stopped when we heard he was born. It was like the gods themselves told us we had to come to terms with Tiana’s presence here; why would they allow her to birth a baby otherwise? Khalid was such a cute baby.” Nader sighs, fond, before his eyes slide over to Dimitri once more. “It was okay after his birth. From a distance, you wouldn’t be able to tell he was mixed, and that was the most important part to the family. That he was still mostly Almyran, despite his Fodlan eyes.”

“They accepted her because of Claude?” Dimitri echoes, brows knitting together as Nader nods.

“We never had a foreigner in the family before,” Nader explains, “everyone had come either from royal blood or fell under Almyran territories. Tiana was an unknown, and that scares people.” It does. Dimitri’s fingers weave between each other as he hunches forward, ears alert. “Her bearing a child, an _Almyran_ looking child, was a blessing. To those of us who were wary, it meant that Almyra would come out on top. She’s set the precedent for all these new wedding customs for fun and glory, but that part of Almyra has never changed.”

“No one has really spoken to me about anything after meeting with Lady Tiana,” Dimitri says, prying. “Though I noticed that people do tend to treat her differently, for reasons I’m guessing that extend beyond her station. She married before she had Claude, however, so surely there must have been another reason the general approved her marriage.”

“Clever,” Nader praises, his eyes twinkling. “You’re right. The old man _did_ approve her before anyone knew she was pregnant. He never gave us an official reason for it, though, no matter how we pestered him. Some say that he had a feeling about Khalid all along.”

“But you don’t think so?” Dimitri prods. “Tiana must have done something else. Something to show her—dedication. Her strengths! To Almyra’s future.”

“Indeed. He approved of her, but, ah,” Nader chuckles, folding his arms together, “he disliked her to the bitter end. I don’t know how she managed to wrangle out his approval.”

“I suppose I’m lucky,” Dimitri smiles, angling his cup to Nader, “After all, we’re friends, at least.”

“Are we?” Nader teases, laughing as Dimitri freezes at the words. “I like you, kid; you’ve got a good heart. And you’ve done well so far—I don’t think Khalid’s treasured a present half as much as yours in his entire life.” Nader’s voice grows fond before his eyes steel, casting over Dimitri. “But I’ve been in Fodlan before. Was there during the war. Some have forgotten that you nearly killed Khalid, but I haven’t.”

“I can’t stake all of Almyra on a few passing conversations, kid,” Nader shakes his head, frowning, “I never would. Tiana gave us Khalid, yes, but he’s half Almyran. Half strong. What can your bloodline bring to the next?” Dimitri’s breath catches, chasing those words.

“We can’t bear children,” he says, scoffs, maybe, harsher than he intended. Hurt stings at his words at the sudden turn Nader’s led the conversation towards; Dimitri’s hands tighten around his cup, staring tightly at Nader. “I’ve never been not transparent about my intentions for Claude and our future together. Two nations in union—isn’t that enough?”

“Well, if you can’t provide me any kids,” Nader answers, “then you’re just going to have to find another way to prove your worth to Almyra.” The table rocks as he stands, his chair scraping against the floor as he swings his legs out. Nader greets him with something of a smile, something of a frown, as he bows his head over the tea.

“Figure it out! I’ll be seeing you!”

Dimitri stares after his trailing back, alone with cold tea, wondering how, exactly, he’s supposed to bear children.

-

Two days.

The time they had left to spend together seemed to dwindle by the second as the troops began to load up the carriages for Claude’s passage into Almyra. Only the finest Fodlan teas, flowers, and armor would be brought as customary gifts to a new ally, in an attempt to charm and wow their neighboring lands with their craftsmanship. Claude himself had led the helm for many of the weapons picked to represent their nation, choosing the traditional Fareghus spears, thin but lopsided due to their heavy points, meant for impaling even the toughest bears. He had swallowed when Claude had chosen a thin dagger, its ends jagged, to represent Aldrestia.

But today was not for weapon picking, nor food sampling, nor armor fittings. It was a relief to have compiled everything beforehand, and while their troops were packing away the last of it, it gave Dimitri and Claude some time. With the inevitable departure on their doorsteps, any time was good time.

Even more so when spent in the air, Petunia’s beating wings casting clouds to the side as they soared over their nation, watching birds flock to join their flight. Claude laughed, delighted as always to get his feet off the ground, and Dimitri clung to his body, remembering that warmth. Wishing to engrave it into his mind.

He had to say goodbye. He had a plan, a speech, and a present all lined up for their touchdown. He’d been putting it aside every day, but there were no more days left. Dimitri opened his mouth, wary, but Claude cut in before he could.

“Look, do you see those mountains?” He peered over Claude’s shoulders, squinting, but the shapes blurred into each other in the distance. The purples and golds faded into an invisible line, and though there were masses of the colors swirling together Dimitri couldn’t make out cloud from mountain from sea from his high up.

“I do?” He responded to Claude’s delight, chuckling as he was elbowed roughly. “I don’t. Where are they?”

“There,” Claude said, pointing. Dimitri tried to follow his line, pointing his own figure to something that could be a pink boulder. “No, not there, _there_.” The yellowish rock? Wasn’t that the dimming sun? “Dimitri, how can your eyesight be this bad?”

“It’s not!” Dimitri protested, joining in on Claude’s laughter. “Your vision is just too good for the rest of us. No wonder your aim holds so true.”

“Flatterer,” Claude teased, yet his head fell back against Dimitri’s chest, relenting.

“Almyra,” Claude divulged, eyes still tracing the shape of those mountains. “From this high up, I can almost see it. The highest mountain points, and the great seas beyond there.” Dimitri quieted, listening, as Claude’s breathe slowed, painful homesickness and want filling his words. “From the sky, the whole world looks connected.”

The world _is_ connected, Dimitri wished to say, but the words dared not slip through his lips. Claude continued unknowingly, sighing.

“I’ve waiting so long to go back, but now that the day is almost here, I’m… nervous. Scared, maybe,” Claude laughed, wrong, shaking his head. “I know I’m acting weird. Who ever heard of someone terrified to go home?”

Dimitri. Dimitri knew exactly how that felt, down to the chilly crawling that surfaced every time he was called to return to Fhirdiad. He should have been happy to be welcomed back by his people. On some days, he is.

On other days, he clutches Claude every closer, and finds home in those warm hands instead of those brittle walls.

His hand sought out Claude then, and it sought out his beloved now.

“I want to take your hand. Is that okay?”

“… Okay.” The words had been nothing more than a whisper on the wind, blowing past, but Dimitri had tightened his hands and closed his eyes to let them sink in. To let the memory freeze in him forever, unchanged, as his finger traced invisible lines around Claude’s thin wrist. They fit so perfectly together.

“Let me come with you.” It was a forgotten argument, and a forgotten plea; though Dimitri had forced those words behind him time and time again, forgotten by the stressful days, distracted by the peaceful ones, there was nothing to distract him in the skies but Claude’s weight and the Almyran mountains far away, enough so that he couldn’t make them out. “Let’s go to Almyra together.”

“Dimitri, you know that’s impossible.”

“It’s _not_ ,” he persisted, squeezing Claude’s hand. “Professor will be here, and we have Ferdinand’s support from Adrestia, and Hilda’s in Leichester. Faerghus will listen to Felix, if nothing else, and Seteth will never abandon the church. I can trust them to protect Fodlan in our absence for just a few moons at the most. Besides,” Dimitri sighed, dipping his head to press a kiss against Claude’s forehead. “I won’t be effective without you. Even the thought of you leaving leaves me anxious, and what good am I to Fodlan worrying day in and out about my love’s safety?”

“I want to come with you. I always want to be with you.” His hand squeezed tight, wishing he could find Almyra from these skies. Wishing he could fly himself, and travel between their nations with ease. But Dimitri had never been good with wyverns and pegasi were impossible; his only option was to go with Claude. To stay with Claude.

“I love you,” he had said. “I want to marry you.”

Claude had gone silent, keeping his eyes on those fading colors as the moon began to rise. Petunia’s wings flapped twice, heavy against the air, as she began to descend in preparation for the impending dark. Dimitri’s hands loosened around Claude’s own, leaning forward to keep his arms around Claude’s waist instead as wind and cloud slowed their return to the ground.

“… Stubborn.” Dimitri blinked, startled, as Claude tilted his head upwards. Though his brows were furrowed, pouting, there was that ever present gentleness in those eyes as Claude leaned back to meet Dimitri’s lips in a kiss. “You’re so stubborn.”

“Is that a yes?” He couldn’t help himself from grinning, giddiness winning out as Claude laughed, chasing every giggle with a kiss until they were holding onto each other more than the wyvern straps.

“I’ll make you happy. I’m sure that the wedding rituals can’t be harder than Fodlan’s.” Dimitri pledged between kisses. Claude had smirked, twisting around and patting his cheek with a grin. The glint in his eyes shouldn’t have been so lovable, nor so demining, when Claude warned him with mirth.

“I’ll wish you luck.”

-

Children.

Technically, _theoretically_ , the process of child-making requires a man and a woman. They fall deeply in love, first, most importantly, and then the man. The man. He and the woman get in bed. Naked. There is a process to such things.

Dimitri groans, tucking his face in, feeling it burn between his hands. He knows, _he really knows_ , due to an unfortunate existence of living next door to Sylvain for longer than he’d care to admit, that the process of child making requires a man and a woman. He also knows, unfortunately, that Fodlan’s understanding of magic in the realm of sex is… not as up to date as he’d perhaps like. The possibility of him bearing Claude’s child is a very distant thought that likely wouldn’t even be touched on in his lifetime. It shouldn’t mean much; they were always planning on adopting two children from each country.

What it does mean, however, is that Tiana’s edge is entirely lost on him.

“I think you’d have cute kids.” Dimitri manages to give Hilda a half-hearted glance. She shrugs, scooping another mouthful of cold sorbet she sniped from one of the many kindhearted kitchen attendees, as she ponders. “I mean, Claude’s curly hair, but blonde? Your eye color, on his eye shape? Hello, would she be a perfect princess or _what_?”

“The what, in this case, seeing as we can’t have children.” Dimitri heaves another sigh, shuffling once more through the many books he’s collected, not stolen, from the library. Almyran magic is of a different breed from Fodlan’s—Fodlan magic has always emphasized the Goddess and her blessings to their lives, and understanding that power to prolong their time on her Earth. But Almyran magic boils itself down to numbers and letters used in functions Dimitri cannot even begin to understand; he wishes sorely, more than ever, that Annette or Sylvain were able to offer their aid.

“There isn’t one magical princess spell for a day thing here? Not one?” Hilda pouts, tilting her head prettily; she’s well comfortable enough in her chair, flipping lazily through the one book she swiped from Dimitri when she crashed his room for “pouting too much” and “being sad to look at”. He’s not sure he looks much better, honestly, but he does admittedly feel better with her in the room.

“Not one,” Dimitri replies, tossing another book back onto the table. There’s a variety of useful magic tricks he’s found, including the ability to change one’s appearance as an illusion, but the magic clearly explained that an illusion is all it is. The deeper inner workings of the body, of creating _life_ , was beyond even Almyra’s best magicians.

“What about someone else’s kids? You can totally pawn of Dedue and Mercedes’ kids, can’t you?” Hilda stills, looking at Dimitri, before sheepishly ducking her head. “Uh, never mind. I didn’t pick them for no reason, you know, it’s just because they actually have kids. Two! You could totally borrow one.”

“I most definitely can’t,” Dimitri deadpans. He shuffles through another book discussing the intricate details of potion making, worrying his lip at the long lines and rather meager results. Twenty hours of brewing for a clothing color changer? “Hilda, you might like this.”

“Ooh,” she beams, snatching the book from his hands and pouring over it greedily, “you just won yourself a free Hilda couture dress!”

“Did I really?”

“No, but I’ll give you a friend’s discount.” Dimitri couldn’t help his smile at that, leaving Hilda alone to peruse the rest of his pile. Besides the books focusing on magic, he also borrowed some featuring courtship rituals, particularly those organized before Tiana’s arrival. Sure enough, the topic was well archived, painting illustrations of dramatic unions borne from wartime tensions and the urge to, as Nader said, create something to protect.

Faerghus fairytales and stories of knighthood often revolved around the man saving a fair maiden, her falling in love in turn, and together birthing strong children to continue their bloodline. Almyra’s stories, in retrospect, were decidedly unromantic: they often had a lead and a love come together to rear children, just as Dimitri remembered, but the family in tales extended well beyond their personal bloodline. Courtship rituals of the past were as much about the approval of a community as it was a union of two lovers.

It was as sweet as thought as it was terrifying. Community above individual for a better future for all meant everyone was happy when the marriage went through, but only one had to be unhappy to separate the couple forever.

“Did you find something new?” Hilda’s hair spills over Dimitri’s shoulders as she leans in, smiling into the palm of her hand. “You’ve been staring at the page forever now.”

“Have I?” He echoes, shaking his head. “My apologies, I was distracted.”

“By?”

“By…” Dimitri hesitates, folding over the page once more. They’d been in the room for easily over an hour or two, yet they had found little of interest to his cause. Nader no doubt already knew all the facts they could comb through, and without his specific approval of Dimitri acting on behalf of Almyra’s best interests, the wedding would be frozen in time. “I think I understand now why Claude was so stubborn about me not doing these trials.”

“Oh, hush! I think it’s fantastic and romantic!” Hilda shushes him with a cheeky grin, swooning dramatically against his shoulders. “You should have _seen_ Claude’s face when I came in to tell him about your fierce and handsome attitude during the knowledge test! He couldn’t stop smiling for _days_.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Dimitri chuckles. Hilda tuts him, tossing her hair back.

“A maiden would never lie, how rude!” Even as she says it, she giggles along with him, shaking her head. “I’m telling the truth here. Even if he was against it, I don’t think Claude would ever want you to drop the challenges midway. I mean, yes,” Hilda rolls her eyes, huffing, “this is totally long and I thought you guys were going to be married by now. But I’m a fan of it! Really! Tiana knew she had to show everyone in this nation how much she loved her husband, and as confusing and loopy as these challenges are, I think they really show it.”

“I wanted to do them to show Claude how much I love him.”

“He knows that,” Hilda interrupts, “and he loves you so, so much too! I don’t think he’s ever been more in love in his _life_.”

“I don’t think I have either,” Dimitri murmurs, shuffling his feet. “I suppose I’ve lost my mind a little with the pressure.” He sighs, ducking his head. “Nader mentioned children, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to have one. What did he mean by that? I’ve been thinking about it, about him, and I don’t think he’d purposefully try to lead me astray.”

“So that’s why you’ve been obsessing over that,” Hilda hums, glancing back to the stolen library books. “I thought you were going to give up on the whole big family idea two books in.”

“I couldn’t. Somewhere in this,” his hand gestures limply to the pile, “is an answer. There is so much about Almyra I’ve yet to learn. Most of what I know is from what Claude’s told me, and the stories Cyril once shared. There has to be something.”

“Something indeed. Well, it’s not a color changing fabric potion, I think, so what else have you learned?”

What else indeed. Dimitri ponders as he picks up a few discarded titles, eyes wandering over the bent spines. Books older than him and much of Faerghus’ kingdom, all speaking of a time he doubted even Claude fully understood.

“Love in Almyra is unromantic,” Dimitri speaks, flipping open a now familiar tale of wyvern betrayed by her beloved, finding her own love buried deep inside. “It’s difficult for me to understand. I love my friends, and my family, but not the way I love Claude. Here,” the woman’s eyes are shut as she cries over her shattered heart on the page, the stars silent behind her, “they’re the same.”

“Tiana gave Almyra her child. Like my father did, and his father before him. It is their duty as nobles to continue their blood. To the previous general, she swore her strength to his nation.” Power, vivid red and vicious, swims across the blue pages as the wyvern wakes up cold without her mate. “What do I have to give?”

“Well I sure hope it isn’t Fodlan,” Hilda hums, shrugging. “You’re our king—anything we have is yours, remember?”

“It isn’t the same. I don’t want to give something from my nation, but something from _me_.” Dimitri worries his lip, taking in the vivid yellow rays that pierced the clouds over the wyvern’s back, warming her. Drawing her eyes upwards. “I think what I have to give, I’ve already shown it. A Faerghus dagger, my strength for Almyra, my loyalty to Claude… but Tiana did the same.”

“And she’s doing fine.”

“No,” Dimitri shakes his head, “It wasn’t until she had Claude that they approved of her. A child Almyra could call her own. But,” he sighs, closing his eyes. “Claude and mine children may not share our flesh and blood, but that doesn’t mean I love them any less.”

“You don’t think Nader will be satisfied with that?” Hilda raises a brow, frowning. “Hey, _I’ll_ beat him up for you if that’s how he feels. I thought you guys were friends.”

“I—”

Dimitri’s hands pulled his legs inward, squatting awkwardly. She thought they were friends? So did he, before this strange tensions settled over them during the tea party. It had felt strained, strangled, bearing witness to that alien weight Nader had given him. Judgement like Felix before him, his head bowed as Dimitri used his lance, his family’s lance, to tap his shoulders. Declaring him his knight before his friend.

“We are,” Dimitri settles on. “It’s because we’re friends that he’s chosen to advise me.”

“Well he’s not very helpful!” Hilda crosses her arms with a humph, shaking her head. “All this talk about children just sounds like Fodlan. I thought he was talking about how Almyra was different?”

“Their love is, as well as their definition of family. I always planned to adopt, whether I would be with a husband or a wife, so I’m happy to see that dream come true, and Almyra so accepting of it as well.”

“You should just adopt everyone. That’ll show _him_ how much you’ll affect Almyra.” Dimitri grins at Hilda’s wicked smile, waggling her brows. “Shall we storm the castle with a wild herd of kids?”

“We shouldn’t. Well, we can’t possibly adopt them all, as much as I’d like to,” Dimitri chuckles to her drawn-out groan. “I told him I couldn’t bear children, but…”

“But?”

“Hilda,” Dimitri breathes, “perhaps you may have been onto something.”

“Am I? I mean—sure! What?” Hilda flusters before her face breaks into a wide grin mirroring Dimitri’s own. “Oh. _Oh._ How can I help?”

-

The sound of laughter, dizzying, high, is pure relief against the silence Dimitri had come to accept as his new normal in Almyra. Though he technically wasn’t banned from leaving the castle, and had in fact gone out several times to repair his weapons as well as on the request of Byleth, he never felt truly comfortable leaving. Every morning, without doubt, his feet would take him up a familiar path to a familiar door, and never being able to knock, never being able to push it open to kiss the sleepy face inside, sapped all strength he had to wander the city.

He hadn’t gone there today, though the letter sealed on his table itched to be delivered. Hilda had stolen him from his bed with a mischievous grin before marching him outwards.

It was well worth the trouble.

“So this is where you’ve been.”

“Nader,” Dimitri greets with a nod, ducking his head as the squealing girl sitting on his shoulders smacks her fists against him. The boys clinging to his arms, one dangling from his wrist, kick their feet out at their new intruder as Nader approaches with his hands raised peacefully. “Ah, just one moment.”

“I’ve got them.” Nader chuckles as he hoists one of the two boys with ease, to the boy’s laughing delight. Dimitri winces when one of those flailing limbs loudly smacks against Nader’s cheek not once but twice; Nader shakes his head as he deposits the boy back onto the floor. It’s less than a minute before another child takes his place, hugging Dimitri’s leg as their eyes wander up Nader. “I see you’ve been busy.”

“I’m not sure _busy_ is correct,” Dimitri chuckles, bending down to allow Ama, the girl who was sitting piggyback, run off his back. New hands, small and stubby, take her place immediately. “Thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure when you’d arrive, so, _ah_ ,” Dimitri jerks as tiny fingers pinch back his hair, the little body on his shoulders steering him to the left. Towards the snacks, no doubt, and he stumbles in the direction warily. “My apologies. Kids!”

“They won’t listen to you. Alright, kids, away! Away!” Nader laughs, plucking the child from his shoulder and shooing them away. The two boys running circles around his legs refuse to let go, one squatting on his foot in protest, until Nader makes a show of opening his coin case. A few gold pieces later find them alone once more, standing over a table laid out with fruity waters and cheap snacks. “A bit of a downgrade from when we last met, huh?”

“It’s not so bad,” Dimitri answers, picking up a square of cheese. It’s not so difficult to swallow the fifth time around, followed up hastily with some water. “At least, when you get used to it.”

“I haven’t had this stuff in ages,” Nader replies, snapping a dry biscuit in half. “It’s fresher than I remember it. This is where your money has been going, then?”

“It has.” Dimitri glances over the running children, laughing as they play in new clothes, with new toys, eating fresh food. He had worried two weeks wouldn’t be enough to meet them all, much less get to understand them, but children had always been quick to warm to others. It was a fact he’d long forgotten, frozen away in Faerghus’ cold; all these children ever needed was a chance to be happy. “It’s been worth every last coin.”

“Isn’t it always?” Nader smiles as he takes in the same view, resting his arm over the table, before his gaze shifts to Dimitri. “Hilda told me you had something to tell me, and I’m assuming it’s about more than coming to an orphanage. What is it?”

“These children came from the Throat.” Nader’s face didn’t twitch at the admission, though Dimitri felt his own heart wrench at the now familiar facts. Duscur, Brigid, Almyra… Fodlan had hurt so many in her own struggle. “They were orphaned as a result of territorial conflicts between Fodlan and Almyra; conflicts Claude—Khalid, and I, want to end.”

“You asked me about family.”

“I did.”

“When I told you that I couldn’t bear children, you told me to figure it out.”

“Have you?”

The question may have been hard, accusatory, from anyone else. The cold stares at greeted Dimitri when he first stepped foot into Almyra had begun to defrost over time as they became acquainted with this strange, tall and pale monster, but the wary distance had been hard for most to breach.

Children, however. Children, who were hurt by people who looked like Dimitri, damned by people who wore the name of his nation and the colors of his kingdom, _those_ children, had accepted him. Had taken to him with smiles and laughter he hadn’t realized he missed so strongly.

“I have.”

There is warmth in Nader’s eyes. Dimitri finds himself smiling.

“I may not make children of my own blood in this lifetime, but I don’t plan on leaving the Almyran throne empty. These kids, all children in Almyra, I want to have a chance to serve their nation.” Dimitri watches as two of them, the older ones who would soon reach an age allowing them to enlist in the army, murmur slowly over books. They had taken to learning like plants to water, and for the first time in perhaps their life, they had a different route open to them. “Like I, and Khalid, and those before us. Our vision will be brought to light, and it _will_ be by our children; we may not share blood, but we will share our hearts. Just like you and Khalid.”

A little dirty, perhaps, but Hilda had cheered when he practiced with her, and Nader grins at him now for his words. “We always planned to adopt,” Dimitri admits. “Fodlan is—less kind, about these things, especially for noble and crest lines. But I’ve always accepted that the Faerghus crest would die with me, and,” his hand squeezes, a vision of red smeared over his wrist from times that now feel like a lifetime ago, cold melted away under his sun, “I’ve come to be excited about the idea. That soon our crests will disappear, and we will all be equal.”

“I don’t have a blood heir to give to Almyra. I never will,” Dimitri finishes, loosening his grip. Watching that red fade away into nothing. “But I will give everything else to her children, so that Fodlan and Almyra could have a shared future: one where these orphanages will never have to be built again.”

Nader looks Dimitri over, considering, speaking softly. “That doesn’t sound very achievable.”

“Neither did unifying Fodlan just a few years ago,” Dimitri smiles, waxing his fingers together. “I suppose I needed someone to let me dream, just a little.”

“You’re asking for my approval on a hypothetical situation.”

“Life never goes the way we imagine. But no,” Dimitri answers, shaking his head. “This isn’t a hypothetical situation. I swear, on my name as Fodlan’s king, that I will never allow a situation that would require these orphanages for the rest of my service.”

“And if it does?”

“It won’t.” Dimitri repeats, turning to face Nader fully. “I wouldn’t leave you concerned. If it does, you have the right to kill me.”

“That’s the least I should promise if I’m taking Almyra’s king.”

Nader’s lip twitch at the words, bemusement, annoyance, nothing and everything in that momentary silence before he sighs, shoulders sagging.

“Well, this has been a lovely conversation. Can’t say I ever look forward to seeing you so tense, kid.” Nader scratches his head, eyes wandering the room. “Can’t you keep your promises a little lighter?”

“My apologies,” Dimitri smiles, “but—ah, I was just thinking about what Felix told me.”

“Yeah? What did he tell you?” Words that he shouldn’t repeat, honestly, in front of any children. The vivid lights, cut between stone pillars and colored glass, shiny over the red spillage and dusty remains of that church, surface in his mind. Felix had taken his spear in his hands and forced it upon him, growling.

“He told me I was a king before I was a friend,” Dimitri repeats, those angry words tinging with something heavier. “That if I didn’t want the burden of being king, I should have passed it on to someone else.”

“So I am,” Dimitri continues, “Byleth is helping me. Through better resources, we’re going to create a Fodlan where everyone has an equal shot at changing Fodlan’s future, and I hope we can do the same in Almyra.”

“You hope, huh?” Nader echoes, raising a brow. “No swearing by the future there?”

“Well,” Dimitri laughs, “I shouldn’t make promises for you. Whether I marry Claude or not, I will ensure that Fodlan and Almyra should never fight again. But this future I’m envisioning hinges on your approval,” his lips quirk, “and yours alone, at this moment.”

It’s perhaps too little, perhaps too much. Dimitri leaves Nader to muse, breaking apart what appears to be the beginnings of a quarrel amongst the children. Ama’s made her way over two boys, shrieking as she tries to shove what could be a cricket or beetle down one of the other boy’s shirt. She quiets only when Dimitri swoops down to pick her up from the floor, admonishing, apologizing fitfully afterwards.

He’s aware of the weight of the stare on his back, the slow consideration that makes heavy those eyes. But Dimitri keeps his smile still, his laughter light, as he gets pulled this way and that by chubby fingers and little fists.

They will be Almyra’s future. His smile softens at the thought, prying apart their fingers and letting them climb onto his body. Their once visible fear of him, his skin, his hair, his one vivid eye, had burned him. He was Fodlan still, whether he wore Almyra garbs and Almyran jewels; his hands were so similar to the ones who slayed their kin.

Yet they loved him. Bore their hearts open to him. Seeing them playing so gleefully together now, with him, has to mean something for a future, _their_ future: a life of peace between the nations that took their families away. A future that is happy whether or not Dimitri is in it.

Nader is gone by the time Dimitri turns his head once more.

-

Hilda joins him the third week in, bringing with her long printed cloths she twirls and spins for their delight, before gifting them with small shirts she’s sewn and hair accessories she’s crafted. One of the boys complains, whining as she puts them in his hair; it isn’t until he reveals that his little brother is bald, a side effect of an illness that’s plagued their magic torn land, that Hilda relents entirely, promising to sew a little hat for him.

“Boys are so troublesome,” she whispers to him on the trip back. Dimitri laughs and chooses not to say a thing when she asks Byleth about their thoughts on adoption.

Dimitri is no stranger to routines. Muscle memory is half the reason he managed to get up in the morning during the hardest times, starved awake and alive until his tired limbs forced him to rest again. These days, waking up to sunlight and warmth, parsing through familiar script and then greeting a new orphanage with new children, become easier than the last.

Rumors of this strange pale man make their way around. Soon, children run up to his legs with their arms spread wide and smiling, asking for presents, for golds, and sometimes, quietly, their parents. He cannot give them everything they wish for, though he wishes he could; when they cry and fuss when he leaves, making him swear he will return to tell them knightly tales once more, Dimitri finds his own eyes teary.

It becomes easier to wake. Easier to smile, easier to greet the men who now nod to him leaving his room.

It becomes harder to sleep. Harder to think about the days since Nader had spoken to him last, and how Hilda insists she made clear he should visit again, but Dimitri had yet to see him since.

He writes another letter to Claude.

Dimitri wakes up to the sun pouring into his room, forcing his sleepy eyes open. He walks those familiar steps, stands by that familiar room. There’s a new letter, stamped with waxy gold. It’s impossible not to smile as he turns it over, smoothing it between his fingers, walking down those spiral stairs. He’d woken up late, but there was still plenty of time to visit the nursery Byleth helped scout out.

“Dimitri.”

“Nader?”

Cold relief and fear clutches at Dimitri when the man waves, his mouth thin. Not a smile in greeting, nor a frown in disappointment. His heart begins to pick up, and Dimitri can almost feel sweat threatening to bead from his palms.

“It’s been a while,” he says in lieu of a desperate _what does this mean_ or _am I being forced to leave_? “How have you been?”

“Busy,” Nader sighs, scratching his neck. “It’s been a long two weeks for all of us.”

“Indeed.” _How do you know that? What was your judgement?_ Dimitri’s smile strains his lips. “It must have been very tough for you to make a decision like that.”

“It had been,” Nader frowns, shrugging. “Negotiating with the border has been rough for all of us, and then we lost our navigator in the cliffs. I didn’t get Hilda’s letters until I touched down last night.”

“You—what?” Dimitri blinks, stupefied. “I—her letters?”

“What about them?” Nader pauses, blank, before his lips spread into a roar of a laugh, clutching his stomach. “So that’s—kid, lower your shoulders! You look like you’re ready to explode!”

“I feel like it!” Dimitri insists, mortified as Nader continues to laugh. What did he _say_? “Could you please explain why you’re laughing?”

“Depends if you can spare a spot of tea.”

It shouldn’t be this nerve wracking to pour a cup of tea, yet Dimitri finds his hand betraying him by tensing hard enough to crack the porcelain. It’s too familiar, strikingly similar to their positions just over a month ago, when Nader had first posed him the question of what he could give. And he had given his answer, well over two weeks now, to silence.

Nader nearly inhales the tea with the speed in which he takes it. He sighs, warmed, taking a pot from Dimitri’s unsteady hands to pour him one as well.

“Drink, kid, please. Your pale as a sheet.” Is he? Dimitri nurses the cup between his hands, worrying his lip as Nader sighs once more. “Not much of a story, honest. We had a skirmish by the coast with some pirates, and I was called out to resolve the situation. But the fight took longer than we expected, so I just got back last night.”

“So, then,” Dimitri swallows, hope threatening to bubble within him, “you were gone since we last met?” _His judgement hadn’t been called?_

“That’s right,” Nader nods. “I was going to tell you earlier, but between our navigator mix up and the blasted pirates it was just easier to come find you when I returned. And here I am!”

“Here you are.” Dimitri takes a long, slow sip from his tea. His finger taps against its gold rim, appreciative in his more patient times, at edge now.

“Just so you know, kid,” Nader’s cup clinks as it hits its platter, his arms folding as he leans forward. “The paperwork has already been filed.”

“I see.” He did not. Why the wait, then, if Nader had made his decision long ago? Dimitri fidgets with the cup, lips pursing. “How long do I have?”

“About a week? Relax! Shrug your shoulders—the hard part’s over!” It is _not_. Speaking to Claude, shamefaced, would be the most difficult part of all. A week left before he would

“I just—I don’t know what to say.” “Why did you—”

“Ah, well, we’re friends, right?” Nader laughs, winking. “Really, I was expecting you to dig up some strange magic spell about turning into a girl for a day. Can’t say I was too surprised about the orphanage, but, ah,” Nader’s smile softens, small but no less genuine. “Seeing those kids take to you… I’ve fought too many battles, kid. I know that there’s no victory in war.”

“But they smiled at you, and they loved you. Even though you’re Fodlan. Can’t say even Tiana managed to do that alone.”

Hope wells up in Dimitri, unexpected, flooding, as his mouth opens and closes soundlessly.

“You didn’t reject me?”

“What? No!” Nader’s jaw slackens in surprise, blinking rapidly. “Claude would kill me. Who else would he want to marry? Why would you think that?” A multitude of reasons, all overlapping, roar in Dimitri’s mind. It would be easier to _not_ answer, really.

“I just don’t understand,” he groans, cupping his face in his hands. When did he start misunderstanding? How _badly_ did he? Was that why Nader had asked him to relax when he called out this morning? Had Dimitri been confused this entire time? “Then what—I—I asked how long I had left in Almyra and you said a week!”

“You have a week before you’re expected to spend your time with Claude!”

“I—um.” Dimitri stutters before giving up entirely, laying his head flat against the table. The room itself may as well not exist for how much it felt like it was falling out from under him in his confusion. Or was this mortification, burning his face red and forcing his shoulders up like an awkward turtle? “I just. I.”

“You need a minute?”

“ _Thank you_.” Even his voice comes out meek. Nader chuckles, his hand a comforting presence on Dimitri’s shoulder, patting him on the way out. Dimitri’s breath wheezes out of him the moment the door clicks shut behind, squeezing his eyes tight.

He wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t being _forced_ to leave. He was staying. Here. In Almyra.

_“Claude would kill me. Who else would he want to marry?”_

Dimitri groans, smacking his face. He’s red, surely, comparable to a tomato as Sylvain once teased him for, an exaggeration that he’d endured many a time during Garreg Mach. But if it were true, it’d be true now, even his ears burning in that happy warm that swims over him. Who else would Claude want to marry?

Who else but him?

“Dimitri! Did you hear Nader just—oh.” Hilda’s voice cuts off, amusement filling it as her frantic steps slow to a crawl. “Well, look at you.”

“Is it that bad?” His voice may be muffled still, coming out strained.

“Well, I mean, smiling is always a good sign in my book, even if you look like you might kill someone with it!” Hilda laughs, tapping his leg with hers. “Congratulations, your majesty. Looks like I’ll get to watch your wedding after all.”

He’d swear by that.

_I just want to be married to you already._

_Is that so much to ask?_

_I realize after taking a short walk around my room that being alone, somehow, after an entire life of just that, is starting to get to me. Just a little._ A little.

_I’m serious. I didn’t know how much I could miss you until you kept doing things that make me love you more and more. Stop doing that! It’s hurting me!_

_I do miss you. I can’t stop counting the days until I can finally kiss you again._

_See you soon,_

_Khalid_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nader: I would never betray you  
> Also Nader: I will however intimidate you to the best of my ability. For fun!  
> Dimitri: :,(
> 
> Dimitri overthinks too much! Claude overthinks too much! Hilda is honestly just here for the ride at this point, she's getting free food *and* cool fashion magics out of it. The true winner of this wedding is Hilda.
> 
> There will be PINING next chapter. I already started it because I wanted to write one (1) scene very badly. Prepare yourself for pining!!!!


	5. Man of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimiti pines a lot. He's not the only one.

_Dearest Lover,_

_Welcome back to my room ;)_

Dimitri turns the paper upside down, but the dotted semi-colon and closed parenthesis reveal nothing to him. A code, maybe? Claude’s always been fond of putting secret symbols in his work, even if it perplexed Dimitri to no end. His love’s endless curiosity is one of the countless reasons Dimitri loves Claude, after all.

It would help, however, if his love cleaned up just a tad more.

Claude’s room is a breath of fresh air, not least because his window easily spans the size of half of Garreg Mach classrooms. His curtains dance at dawn’s coming, morning breeze tugging them to and fro inwards to greet their new friend. The familiar scent of chamomile and cinnamon greet him gently in contrast to the glass wind chimes that dance to a foreign song. The room is as comfortable as he remembered.

No, more comfortable. The bed left half made makes him smile, imagining a sleepy Claude grumbling as he’s forced from his room for the sake of tradition. Or rather, unconventional ceremonies slowly becoming tradition, as Dimitri’s now learned.

His hands press into the mattress, sighing. Realistically it’s only been a matter of a few months, hardly a handful, since he slept in it last yet his heart aches at the sight.

He misses Claude. He misses him a lot.

Nader’s face suddenly makes sense.

-

Dimitri had never realized how much he’d miss solid ground until it was gone.

“What is that phrase you like to use in Fareghus? My humble abode? I could never grasp those tricky Fodlan sayings.”

“My home is your home, for the sick and for the needy,” Dimitri corrected. “But you already knew that. Claude, I think you know more sayings than I do, in Almyran and Fodlan alike.” Claude blinked upwards at him, innocent, as he shrugged.

“Ah, I don’t know. It took me a long time to memorize idioms.”

“Didn’t you used to transcript every lesson by memory?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Never mind,” Dimitri laughed, shaking his head. Claude grinned as he tugged him closer, properly into his room now. Coming straight from several days on wyvern back or rocky carriage rides, having solid marble and wood beneath his feet felt like a blessing. Dimitri smiled when he surveyed the room; it was, in every way, Claude. The casual messiness, the worn-in blankets, the books that had most definitely seen better days. If someone told Dimitri that the windows were a custom creation, he would not be surprised—they spanned the horizon, letting Dimitri take in the setting sun with an awed gasp. Besides him, Claude squeezed their fingers together, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

“Your room is lovely,” Dimitri said after returning the kiss more than a few times. They were smiling against each other’s lips as travel exhaustion melted away to sudden euphoria; against all odds, no matter how much Claude had initially refused, Dimitri had made it. He was here now, in Almyra, and soon he’d be marrying his lover. “I’m almost envious.”

“I don’t know. I liked yours,” Claude squeezed his neck as he leaned in closer, turning his head to press his face against Dimitri’s nape. “We never get snow this far down from the border. You’re so lucky to have it every year.”

“Hmm. I’m afraid you won’t be saying that after experiencing a winter in Fhirdriad.”

“Excuse me?” They had laughed over it, pushing each other between kisses, promising each other plans. They would have to have the official meetings first to welcome Dimitri as Fodlan’s King, then after that a gracious feast that Claude claimed would last three days, and then slow, mind-numbing days of debate lay ahead of them after that.

“They can’t possibly be as bad as the Alliance Rountable?”

“Oh, they—hm,” Claude paused, scratching his chin. “No, no. Maybe you’re right on that one.”

“Really?” Dimitri chuckled, twirling Claude in his arms as they marched around the room. His bookshelves stacked high, his lanterns that seemed to grow brighter as the sun sunk into the ground. His legs ached from sitting all day in the carriage and now it seemed like he could want nothing more than to dance with his love forever. “You? Khalid? Admitting defeat in a debate?”

“ _You_ try dealing with Glouchester next time and then we can talk about defeat.” Claude’s eyes twinkled with mirth as he said it, tugging Dimitri into a dip. Then another, their hands trading off to lead and follow and lead again, dipping and swirling their fatigue away.

The crowd of fatigue and dread that lingered over them the last few days disappeared with every turn. They exchanged stories between kisses, secrets between laughs, adorations between dances. It had been a while—too long, really, since Dimitri had danced last. The moves Claude pulled him in were as fun as they were unfamiliar.

It was only a matter of time before their legs tangled into something new.

“And—oof!”

Dimitri grunted as they fell against the bed. That’s right. Unlike his chambers back in Fhridiad with long bars that held up his bed, Claude’s had no such adornments. Instead, a lowered lantern, larger than the rest and shaped in a way almost like the chandeliers back home, illuminated against his back. Dimitri shuffled up, swallowing when he caught the soft glance on Claude’s face, half-hidden in the light.

“We should wash up.” He offered. Claude nodded, laughing; even though he knew he was being watched, his smile didn’t fade. Neither, Dimitri knew, did his own.

“Yeah. And we should get some food.”

“Indeed.”

He’d have to install these lanterns back in Fodlan. They seemed less dangerous than simply leaving candles out on every open surface, and more importantly than that, the tinted glass of the lanterns created a rainbow of colors across Claude’s face. Dimitri pulled himself higher, kissing each reflection as Claude’s hands pulled him closer, wrapping them around his back.

His words were quiet when he whispered them in Dimitri’s ear.

“… Are you really going to ask my parents to marry me?”

“Of course.” The reply was automatic. Dimitri had spent nearly seven years thinking about his future, whether he’d even have one, and now that a shared future with the most wonderful man he’d ever met was in reach he refused to let it go.

Claude’s hands fisted themselves against the back of his coat. Dimitri shifted, letting his arms fall to the side as Claude rearranged him. “Do you not want me to?”

“…”

“Claude?”

Claude’s silence stretched longer as he placed Dimitri’s face against his shoulder, bending upwards to bury his own against Dimitri. He swallowed, mildly uncomfortable with the angle, blinking when he realized that his sleeve was beginning to wet.

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Liar.” He had laughed when he said it, his own throat growing choked. Dimitri sniffled, squirming one arm loose from Claude’s hold to wipe at his face. He didn’t mention Claude taking the opportunity to do the same, ducking his head to hide against Dimitri’s chest instead. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Claude sobbed, a bubble of travel weary exhaustion and elation swirling in his voice as he grappled with Dimitri’s jacket. Dimitri shrugged it off, laughing as Claude snatched it from his arms immediately, falling back onto the bed as he tugged Claude into a hug. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m just so happy to be here.” Dimitri’s own voice cracked as he said it, his vision blurring. It was still Claude in front of him, but the lantern lights were distracting. Made him look pink and blue and yellow and green, all the happy colors of life. “I’m just—I.”

“Dimitri.”

“I love you. I really,” he wiped at his tears. No, it had been Claude, pushing aside his hand to wipe Dimitri’s tears and laughing when Dimitri copied the motion on his face. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“Dimitri!” Was Claude laughing or was he crying, tangled up in each other? “Gods. You can’t say that to me.”

“But it’s true!”

“You can’t say that until I tell you how much I love you first.” Dimitri shook his head, stubborn, even as his eyes blurred up far too much for him to do anything but squeeze them tight and will away the tears. With every word, however, he found even more bubbling upwards from his chest as Claude spoke. “I love you so much. I trusted you with my life, Dimitri, and you came for me. You saved me. My very own personal knight and king.”

“I would always save you.” His voice quivered. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Dimitri.”

“Claude, do you want to marry me?”

The last thing he remembered was the grimy feeling of sleeping in his sweat stained shirt on foreign half-made blankets under rainbow lights. That, and the softest press of lips against his own.

“There’s no one else I’d want to marry more.”

-

_I’m trusting you with this. If there is nothing in the envelope you have my express permission to go kick Nader between the legs._

“Claude’s key?”

Dimitri turns over the keys between his fingers. Gold plated with green gems in a floral shape at the end, easy to tumble between his knuckles. He knew this key well enough.

“Why are you giving me this?” Dimitri blinks as he takes in Nader’s awkward shuffling. He had been assured that there were “no hard feelings” with Nader running his task; Hilda had, however, told him a very different story. Dimitri was hard-pressed to believe Claude would be angry with Nader over anything, but the man in front of him seems far too nervous to believe otherwise.

“Ah, I had a feeling he didn’t tell you this. He’s still, er, kind of angry with me.” Nader scratches at his head as he heaves a sigh. “You’re staying with kiddo for a few days. Three, to be exact, starting tomorrow morning. Someone will be there to wake you up and deliver you.”

“What?” Dimitri gasps, sharp. “Why? I thought—wasn’t it traditional for me not to see him until the wedding?”

“That it is,” Nader nods. “Tradition has it that its bad luck to see your partner before the big day. You must see each other at exactly the same time so that your new future starts together. So, yes, you won’t be seeing him.”

“But I’ll be in his room?”

“Yep!” Nader chuckles at Dimitri’s expression. “I know, I know! But think of it this way! It’s a lesson in self-control. At least it’s only three days.”

Only three days. If this had been before Dimitri had even planned to leave for Almyra, three days wouldn’t seem long at all. After all, he had an entire month with Claude that seemed to be too short. Now, however, after months of separation besides a heartfelt letter every few days, three days is too thin a line.

“The maids will help you out. You’ve only got to do some pretty simple stuff like changing his sheets and cleaning his room. It’ll be nothing!”

Simple. Being in the same room without touching Claude, much less seeing him, did not sound _simple_.

“Did Tiana think of this herself?” It certainly didn’t sound like something she would appreciate. She’d taken to distancing herself from him ever since the feast after their sparring match, much like her husband who gave them a very wide berth of space whenever they both participated in meetings. When asked, Hilda simply said it was a part of the wedding charm. Winning over the parents at the wedding is apparently very romantic.

“Her? Hah! No way.” Nader shook his head with a snort. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown woman throw a tantrum before. No, Tiana hated the idea. She said that it was so ridiculous it even blew Fodlan’s wedding rituals out of the water, and we all knew how she felt about those.”

“Being honest, kid, Almyra’s always had a strange set of customs. It comes with the territory of being an empire; every nation we took over, we had to figure out a way to incorporate their own customs with our culture. Else you get a whole lot of angry riots.” The bitter truth. Fodlan’s individual customs seemed to wage an ever harsher war than the turmoil it had already been through, simply because people could not come to peace with adopting traditions they personally hadn’t grown up with.

“So this idea wasn’t Almyra’s originally?”

“No. Something this romantic? Starting a new path together?” Nader laughs. “No. This was… this was from overseas.” Dimitri’s eyes fall back to the key, rubbing his finger over the cool metal. “You just have to take care of him for a few days, that’s all. No talking, and no looking, sure, but you’ll be with each other. Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting this whole time?”

“I just don’t understand it.” Dimitri bites his lip, bitter. “Everything up until now had a meaning. A proof of my strength, my dedication, for Claude and for Almyra. But this doesn’t… I understand that I’m not meant to see him before the ceremony. Fodlan has a similar custom. But why have us in the same room then? Why have me stay by his side if we can’t talk?”

“Sometimes, kid, the person you love won’t be able to talk. Sometimes they won’t be able to move from their bed.” Nader sighs. “These days, a lot of our traditions are watered down. Kids don’t care as much anymore. The old customs were about taking care of your lover. But it was more than just—cleaning their clothes and making their beds. You had to feed them, and wash them, and be there for them no matter what. A reminder of the future you’re picking, to be with someone until their bodies give out.”

“I don’t understand,” Dimitri repeats, crossing his arms as he shifts. He feels uncomfortable, cold even, at Nader’s words. “Claude’s perfectly healthy. He’s made it through a war relatively unscathed. I trust him to take care of himself.”

“And when he can’t?”

“That won’t happen,” Dimitri insists. If there was anyone he trusted to take care of an entire nation, it would be Claude. No one had emerged from the war entirely the same, but there was always something brighter about Claude. The secrets, those shadows, that haunted Edelgard and Dimitri never seemed to linger in Claude’s footsteps quite the same. “If anything,” Dimitri mumbles, “I worry he’ll end up taking care of me.”

“Ahh. Well,” Nader coughs, “I think you get the meaning of this whole thing, even if it is a bit botched up. Like you said, you and kiddo have a lot more days ahead of you. Just… try to deal with it, okay? It’s just for three days.”

Just for three days. Right.

Dimitri turns the key over his palm once more, frowning. Somehow, he has an odd feeling about this.

-

_Don’t mind the mess. The maids are stationed outside the door to monitor but they have rotations every 45-minute mark for 15 minutes, so you’re not constantly watched. There’s no night surveillance either._

_Hey._

_Are you okay?_

The schedule goes like this: Dimitri has 45 minutes within the room to manage a list of tasks provided to him by the maids. It lists out rather basic and, honestly, incredibly easy instructions from removing the blankets from Claude’s bed to change the lining and opening the windows to air out his room to emptying out the garbage can and wiping down any dust that’s managed to collect on Claude’s desk. The final 15 minutes includes him reporting to whoever is stationed outside the door that his tasks are done or, alternatively, ask for assistance if he needs to leave the room for whatever reason.

If Claude’s bed chambers weren’t connected to his very own private bath, it might have been very, very awkward. As it is, Dimitri’s main issue is simply being bored to death.

The bright side is that every hour brings him a new note. It’s difficult to dust the windowsills for the third time as Claude sits at his desk; his arms begin to ache as he leans outwards to dust the difficult to reach corners, blurring out the room with the calls of wyvern riders in the air. He can hear the sounds of Almyra—her peoples at the marketplace, her knights in the sky, her princes and princesses within the castle.

He can hear Claude breathe.

Dimitri leans outwards a little further. He pretends not to notice the scraping of Claude’s chair nor the feeling of eyes on his back.

Ten more minutes until the next rotation.

-

_I’m alright. I’m starting to think I won’t make a very good maid in the future._

_Why? Are you alright?_

Armed with a sponge and a block of flowery soap meant for tile, Dimitri kneels in the bathroom scrubbing at the tiles before they are meant to be filled again. He hadn’t known that steam, left alone, could result in unhealthy breathing conditions as mold grows in the warm and moist rooms. Clearing the water between uses had seemed like a rather wasteful Almyran custom until armed with this new knowledge.

It’s a little easier to get into the task knowing Claude is in the room separate from this one.

There’s technically no door between the princes’ bedroom and bathroom, instead connected by a small tunnel barely the length of a horse. Lace and transparent fabric make for a dividing point between the two rooms, but it’s not enough to stop Dimitri from turning his head on occasion to the room behind him when he feels those same eyes.

It’s harder to ignore the stares when he knows what those eyes look like. It’s not anger that pierces his back this time.

Want. Gratitude. Loneliness.

The feet never make a step against the tile. Never break past those dangling curtains. Never makes a noise, even though Dimitri remembers those lips being so talkative.

Those eyes linger.

-

_I’m going out to the lab. Some of the flowers we brought from Fodlan have finally started revealing results, and I think we’re on the cusp of a really_ big _new discovery. Whatever we find, it’s going to affect trade in a big way, I promise you._

_I’m fine._

_It’s just so hard to not stare at you. The five years we spent apart felt shorter than this._

The letter is on his desk. Claude’s desk.

It’s a quarter of a note, ripped parchment. Hardly enough to warrant sending.

Even so, Dimitri’s fingers curl around it as though made of precious gold. He knows, technically, that though he’s not allowed to see Claude there is nothing stopping Claude from seeing him. Avoiding his fiancé in his own room while tending to him was, after all, part of the task.

Self-control. Ensuring that he would never hurt Claude when the other was unable to defend himself in his own chambers. A test as much a reminder of the inevitable passage of time as it is an outdated ritual.

He wonders if this is a test for Claude, in its own way. Seeing Dimitri but being banned from touching him, from speaking to him. The maids thus far have all greeted him with a smile and a gentle wave, often complimenting whatever tasks he’s checked off on the list, but they were stationed there for a reason. Even if they were not allowed into the room to see what was happening, they could hear.

It’s a little worse, Dimitri thinks, being in Claude’s presence and not being allowed to hear him.

_-_

_Did I ever tell you that you mumble really loudly when you’re stressed out?_

Dimitri snorts as he reads the note, folding it in two besides the bedroom table. He had been uncomfortable when the maids originally knocked to inform him that they’d be leaving, and more important, that they were leaving him in Claude’s room alone.

Alone meaning no Claude.

Another change from the original tradition, made necessary when people complained that it was impossible to _not_ look at their sleeping partners when half asleep. Far too many incidents of night activity happening either by accident or on purpose (and then unreported) resulted in a few changes of the custom later popularized by one of Almyra’s princes when he chose to sleep alone outside of the castle during his engagement.

Dimitri isn’t sure whether he’d like to thank the man or be upset with his decision. On one hand, being alone in Claude’s room eliminates any possibility of being caught interacting with Claude when he’s not supposed to.

On the other hand, sleeping in Claude’s room, surrounded by Claude’s scent and Claude’s things, staring at Claude’s ceiling, is torture.

“Just two more days,” he murmurs, eyes tracing the form of the very same lantern they had vowed under that first night. A rainbow sky for their future.

“Just two more days.”

-

_Is it creepy to say I missed the way you sleep?_

Day two is, somehow, worse than day one.

If the maids had any pity for Dimitri on day one, it’s all run out now. He squirms his way through Claude changing, noticing every mirror and making sure he was not looking at a single one, only to nearly explode when the door opened to a maid unexpectedly entering with a cart of food. For both of them.

They drink the same tea. Eat the same foods. Walk the same path in the same room.

Claude mumbles when he studies. Dimitri does the same. The dust comes up easier. The wind blows their curtains inwards, whipping around his face. There are more wyverns today, one who nearly crashes into their tower until the rider pulls them away.

They’re side by side when the fifteen-minute mark comes around again. Parallel lines. Never intersecting. No matter how strongly he wishes to turn and set their paths together.

Dimitri and Claude. Claude and Dimitri.

He cannot wait for the day to be over.

-

_Have a meeting about next phase of trade plan. Wish me luck?_

Dimitri never knew how much work went into arranging his bed. The fitted sheets strain against even his strength as he tries to pull them around the mattress. He groans as another corner comes undone again, forcing him to run around the bed to try and fix it. They are far, far wrinklier than acceptable, but it’s the best he can do.

To be completely honest, he was starting to doubt the necessity of the numerous bed decorations. Sure, he enjoyed returning to his room to find numerous embroidered pillows in Fodlan colors representing the three former jurisdictions before unification as well as some bearing the symbol of the Church of Seiros, but he never needed them all to sleep. If anything, they impaired his rests as he often found himself waking up to them on the floor.

Dimitri grunts as he fixes the next sheet of the bed, pulling its elastic all the way to the floor. He pauses when his hands hit something cold, releasing the sheet to grapple with the strange item tucked under the bed. Had he knocked something over? Would that get him in trouble with the maids?

“Oh.”

A familiar dagger stares back at him.

He had planned on Claude using it when he first thought of the gift. Sure, Sylvain laughed at his decision as Ingrid patted his shoulder with vague pity, but Dedue had said it was a good idea and Felix, begrudgingly, said there was no better gift than a weapon. Mercedes had come up with the idea of a custom sheath, Annette and Ashe the joint symbols to be carved into the dagger, and then the Golden Deer to approve the final design.

Byleth had been the one to see it last, smiling when they assured Dimitri that it was a gift of such obvious love.

He hadn’t guessed, however, that Claude would actually use it. Would bring it with him to bed as Dimitri had come to discover was his most fearful moments. Would choose this dagger over the rest, the crooked and the poisonous ones Dimitri knew Claude so often carried on his body. Even barely clothed, as he often was in their nights together, Dimitri knew better than to reach under those straps lest he hurt himself on sharp edges.

Dimitri pauses as he moves to place the dagger back. Claude was left handed, but the dagger was on the opposing side of the bed. It would make throwing it a more difficult task, which didn’t make any sense except…

Dimitri slept on Claude’s left side.

He smiles as he places it back, silently thanking Sothis and Almyra’s Gods for knocking his fingers into the dagger. New motivation courses through his veins.

Soon they’d be able to be together once more.

-

_Could I go through your books?_

There are plenty of old customs Dimitri would like to water down. For one, he’d rather not have any more children in Faerghus be forced to learn the path of the sword before learning how to walk. For another, as much as he enjoyed teatime, it was difficult to ignore the many financial strains it put on commoners when they were forced to invite over noble guests to discuss regulations and trade. Few could afford the varieties of teas demanded by nobles, and more than once marriage negotiations that fell through left the lesser house even more impoverished than before.

That being said, he wishes this custom retained more of its original charm.

“Stupid Faahir, stupid Ram, stupid Baba…”

It’s difficult _not_ to turn around and pull Claude into a hug when his lover returns to his room with an angry huff. The sound of his chair scraping roughly against the tile is a muted sort of frustration punctuated by a long, drawn-out groan.

Then, quietly, there’s the rustle of paper and ink.

The paper that enters Dimitri’s vision is technically held by a hand that he’s not allowed to see.

_Sure. Want to read them together?_

He does.

Dimitri smiles as he takes the paper in his hands. Clever, of course, in the way he knows Claude is. They wouldn’t be breaking any of the rules, reading in silence, looking at a book instead of each other, sharing a story. But it would be more than the empty nothingness between them with every passed paper.

They could read on the bed, wide enough to fit both and another, sprawling over open books and closed ones. There were plenty of colorful tales Dimitri is sure he’d never heard of before, and though he preferred to read them aloud with Claude the thought of sitting close enough to share a book, not touch, feels dreamy after months of isolation. There was even the possibility of setting Claude on the desk, Dimitri in the chair, basking in the sunlight and gentle breeze from the open window. 

The open window.

Walking over to grab new parchment and ink would be too obvious. Dimitri swallows as he raises his finger into the air to trace out the letters instead. He doesn’t need to turn. Doesn’t need to see to know Claude’s face as he writes.

_I’m sorry_.

It’s harder to breathe in that silence. Hardest when he hears Claude’s quiet steps back to his desk, the scraping of his chair against the floor, the sound of papers. Meetings in review.

He scrubs the floor a little harder.

-

“Huh? What are you doing out here?”

“Hilda?”

Dimitri wrangles his hand free to wave at his friend. Hilda returns it with a raised brow, quiet, as she surveys the chaos. The chaos being that Dimitri has come to quickly discover he has no idea how to fold laundry.

“I thought you were supposed to be in Claude’s room all day. Days. It’s the final day today, right?”

“It is. Just one more night and then this ceremony is over.” No, that wasn’t quite right. Dimitri knew that the final part of Tiana’s tests took place on the morning of her wedding day, but the details were fuzzy. It was apparently the one part of the trials that differed by the host—some chose to have the groom blindly choose the correct flower from a bouquet, others a word from a hat. There was also the (unfortunate) option of choosing a ring blindly on wedding day: the fiancé had to pay for the ring regardless of the price. A not so subtle way of dividing nobility from commoners.

Whatever the case, the sixth trial was always about choosing the right thing. How and what was being chosen, however, was unknown.

“Wait. Hilda, why are you here?” Dimitri blinks upwards at her, frowning. “These quarters are reserved for the royal servants. Don’t the maids usually take care of your clothes?”

“Well, yes. Buuuut…”

“But? Hilda,” Dimitri pauses, “you didn’t. You didn’t swing by just to see if I was working, did you?”

“Noooooo?” Even as she says it, Hilda laughs. “Oh, come on! I just knew you’d need help. I bet princes _never_ have to learn how to fold their clothes, am I right?”

“You are,” Dimitri agrees, sheepish. “I could really use some help, if you have a moment?”

“You’re making me work? Hmm, I guess I could. If I get a teensy little favor?”

“A favor? Not that I mind, but, I don’t have much to offer away from Fodlan.”

“Oh, hush!” Hilda grins as she kneels to join him, snatching the crumpled tunic in his hands. “Yeesh, you _really_ need help. Maybe I should call a big favor instead.”

“I do,” Dimitri relents, stopping entirely to watch her flatten the shirt on her knees before pulling it inwards into thirds. “What favor do you need?”

“Oh, you know… just a little thing…”

“Hilda? It’s not… you’re not asking me for something… illegal, are you?”

“What! No, no! I wouldn’t! There’s no way! I’m just… ugh! This is so embarrassing! How did you do this with Claude?”

“Do what?”

“Yes, Hilda, do what?” They flinch in surprise at the looming voice behind them. Byleth raises a brow as they take in the surroundings, from the pile of clothing still damp to the single folded shirt in Hilda’s hands. They sigh, slow, before joining them on the floor. “Having trouble folding, Dimitri?”

“A little?” Shame colors his cheeks as Byleth nabs a pair of pants from the pile. “Professor, please! I just need a little reference. I’m not supposed to ask for help.”

“Says who? Tiana had her maids help her.”

“What?” Dimitri and Hilda echo the word in unison, turning to Byleth with wide eyes. They shrug, smoothing out the pants once more before beginning a new, neater pile with Hilda’s folded tunic.

“Tiana had her maids help her. There’s no way she would have managed by herself.” Trust Professor, of everyone, to not only befriend Almyra’s so-called Deadly Flower but also know her well enough to reject her image. “The only thing she obeyed was not talking to Ahzari. She only grew grateful for this lesson when Claude was born.”

“Claude’s birth?” Dimitri asks, hesitant as he pulls a new shirt from the pile. He could do this. Maybe. “I can’t see the relationship between this trial and Claude’s birth.”

“Childbirth is a painful time for mothers.” Byleth’s voice quiets as they lean over to fix Dimitri’s folding. “The stress the body is under is overwhelming. For a few days, _she_ was the one in bed, unable to do much more than talk and hurting every second. Azhari had to completely take over the household to care for her.”

“That’s stupid,” Hilda huffs. “He could _see_ her at least. And talk to her!”

“Of course. But when she saw how hard he was working when she could do nothing but watch, it made her remember.”

“I’d take care of Claude.” Dimitri bites his lips when they both turn to him at his words. “I don’t need a trial to prove it. I know I’d take care of Claude, no matter what, and that he’d do the same to me.”

“Then why bother with tradition? Why not skip the trials and marry him?”

“Because…” Claude had asked him almost that exact same question. Had asked that every time he broached the topic back in Fodlan, increasingly aware of the ticking clock. He pushed, and he pushed, and when Claude told him off he found that the thought refused to leave him be.

“Because Dimitri wants to make Claude happy, duh!”

“Hilda?”

“He’s so romantic, don’t you think?” She smiles at him as she says it. “He could have the easy marriage, but no! We have stakes! Motivation to worry and fret about his future! And at the end of the day, when we _do_ get our dream wedding, Dimitri is our hero.”

“A hero.” Byleth mulls over the word, turning to Dimitri. “Do you feel like a hero?”

“I can’t even fold shirts,” Dimitri laughs, relenting. “I don’t think I’m a very qualified hero.”

“But you helped unify Fodlan!”

“You were a very strong leader.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone in the entire school would consider you a hero. You could be the hero-king of Fodlan. That could stick!”

“Hero-king… not a bad name.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“I’m _totally_ calling you hero-king. Ooh, I’m going to commission Ignatz to paint you with that name!”

Dimitri shrugs, tossing the final shirt in. What seemed like an impossible task for his beginner hands was suddenly over with the aid of his two friends’ support. He smiles at them, gentle, as he grabs a basket to place the folded laundry into.

“It’s not my place to decide what my friends call me. But,” Dimitri smooths over the final clothes, hauling the basket up. “If there’s anyone I want to think of me as a hero, I’d want it to be Claude. Now, I have to deliver this before the hour is up. I’ll see you both tomorrow!”

“Byeeeeee Dima! So… He knows that Claude’s called him hero before, right?”

“I’d hope so. Now, what favor did you need?”

“Eek!”

-

_Nader says we’re drinking tonight. The hall reservation went through (of course it would. I’m the next king of Almyra!)_

_Only a few more days now._

_I miss you._

“Dimitri?”

Dimitri’s hands freeze, caught in his blankets, as light, blinding, enters his vision. The door creaks open, and between the hallway’s light is a looming shadow of a man, messy hair and jewel eyes Dimitri could sing sonnets about in his sleep. He wonders if this is a dream now, so fortuitous, but the sound of the steps is so real.

“Claude, please don’t come in,” Dimitri answers, willing, begging, his head to stay ever forward. Refusing to angle, to twitch, to give the slightest centimeter away because he knows if he so much as spies Claude from the corner of his eye, he won’t have any more restraint. Longing, ever stronger with the distance forced between them, stings at his heart.

“Why?” Amusement. He can see that smile, that teasing grin, and hunger grapples within him as the door slips open another centimeter. One more step closer, then another. “This is my room you’re sleeping in.” Claude’s head tilts, the tops of his hair bouncing in the shadow. Cute.

“I can’t see you,” Dimitri wrenches his eyes shut, determined even as his heart’s thudding betrays him. “I’m not allowed to, remember?”

“Then don’t look at me.” The bed creaks, and then, _then_ , the sharp stench of ale is in the air. Claude’s drunk. The realization shakes Dimitri thoroughly, desire seeping upwards. Claude never gets drunk normally, paranoid to the point of tossing out liquor to mimic drinking in parties. Alcohol is his strategy, not his vice; yet the smell of it is unquestionable as Claude lingers over, the weight of his knee knocking against Dimitri’s calf. “Just keep your eyes closed.”

“Claude,” Dimitri warns. Claude hums in reply, swinging his legs over, and then the weight of him, Claude, Khalid, his love and the man he wishes to marry, is suddenly on Dimitri, familiar thighs squeezing his own. “Claude, please don’t tease me.”

“Tease you? When has hugging you been teasing?” Claude laughs as he says it, heavy and wet. Drunk past the point of comprehension despite his silver tongue.

“Since we aren’t even allowed to see each other. Claude!” Dimitri startles as Claude’s hands squirm by this sides to embrace him. He bites down on his lips but sure enough the staff is gone at night. “Claude, please, you can’t be here.”

“You don’t want me?”

“Of course I want you.” He wants Claude so badly it hurts. Dimitri takes in a ragged breath as Claude presses seemingly impossibly closer, nuzzling his neck. He’s drunk. He’s merely drunk. “Claude, please?”

“Please what? Dima,” Claude sighs, warm breath hitting his neck. “Don’t shove me away.”

“I have to. You know the rules.”

“But I missed you.”

“I…” His heart pulls at the words, both elated and despairing at the situation. Dimitri wants nothing more than to turn over, to kiss Claude, to open his eyes and take in his lover in every angle. He wants, and he wants, and every shift of Claude’s finger, every shiver of his body, every breath against his back, only makes him want more.

“I missed you,” Claude repeats, squirming. “I missed you so much. That’s why I didn’t want to do this. I finally found someone I love, someone who loves me, I...”

“Claude?”

“Do you love me?”

Goddess, he hadn’t realized how hard this would be. Dimitri forcibly stills himself, willing away the urge to turn around and hug Claude. To kiss him. To see him, fully, to tell him the truth, to whisper and speak and shout how he’s found that absence has grown his heart so fond that he would do anything to never separate from his love’s side again.

They’re right next to each other. He can feel Claude’s heartbeat against his back, Claude’s hands against his chest, Claude’s legs entwined with his. But Dimitri can’t _do_ anything—not if he wants to do this right. Not if he wants to make Claude happy.

He’s always wanted to do it the right way. The way he knew Claude never expected anyone to do for him.

“Dimitri?”

“I love you, Claude,” his voice breaks on a croak, throat suddenly tight. “So please leave me be.”

“Are you crying?”

“ _No_.” He is.

“Liar.” Claude laughs as he says it, his own voice hoarse. Dimitri sniffs, willing away the tears and failing. Claude’s hands come upwards, slow, until they hit his cheek, wiping away the hot tears. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“I love you.” His voice cracks on the words and then Dimitri is crying, truly, his chest tight and his eyes blurring. “I love you so much. I don’t want to spend another day away from you. I don’t want to not have to see you. You’re my love, Claude. Khalid. Both sides of you. Every side of you. I don’t… I don’t want to mess this up.”

“Dimitri.”

“I love you. I really, really love you.”

“Dimitri!” Claude laughs and cries, the word soaked in so many unspoken thoughts. “Gods. You can’t say that to me.”

“But it’s true!”

“I know,” Claude quiets, squeezing Dimitri. “I know.”

“I love you. I think I always have. You had the worst haircut in Garreg Mach besides Lorenz, you know? Awful! I think Hilda called you pasta man.” Claude wheezes with laughter, shaky, his eyes wetting Dimitri’s shirt. He doesn’t mind. “You were always so trusting. Too trusting. I didn’t even need to try to get you around my finger. Whenever I needed you, you were there. And then, when I didn’t think I needed you,” Claude’s hand bunches in his shirt, pulling. “You were there too.”

“Claude?”

“Why were you there? Why were you always there?” Claude’s voice rises in pitch, crackling thunderous, before he takes in a shuddering sob. “I thought I could take on the world alone. I could change the world alone. No friends, no family, nothing. That’s me. Khalid. The loner. But then you were there. You were there with the bandits, and then with the mock battles, and then when Edelgard declared war. You protected me, _me_ , even though you had no reason to. You could have gone after Teach. You should have gone after Teach.”

“I…”

“You came for me instead. Each and every time.” Claude butts his head against Dimitri’s back. “I thought you were dead. I thought everything was gone. But then you came back. You came back again, and again, and every time I think ‘this is it, Khalid, this is what your cousins warned you of’ you appear. I keep thinking I’m going to lose my dreams, Dimitri. And then I wake up to _you_.”

“Why are you always saving me?”

“Because I love you. Khalid.” Claude rakes in a gasp at the name, every breath shaking. “No matter what, I swear I’ll be there. Nothing could stop me from making you happy, please, Khalid, know that I’m telling the truth.”

“My hero.” It’s meant to come out teasing, perhaps, stretched too long. But it’s genuine instead, soaked in relief and trust, and Dimitri shakes with the weight of it.

“Dimitri.” The hands wriggle loose from under his arms, pulling back. Dimitri stiffens as cold air rushes between them, Claude pulling himself away. No. Want fuels him, hunching his shoulders, the urge to reach back and pull Claude close demanding. “Do you want to marry me?”

He wants that. He wants that and anything, everything, else he can possibly get with Claude.

“There’s no one else I’d want to marry more.”

Claude’s bed shakes as Claude detaches himself entirely, pushing Dimitri’s legs off (he didn’t remember putting them on, when had that happened?) as he shifts. Dimitri squeezes his eyes tight, biting on his lip, willing, _willing_ , back his desire to protest. To say no. To beg Claude to stay just a few more minutes, tests and technicalities be damned.

“Keep your eyes closed, Mitya.”

He doesn’t dare open them.

Not even when lips press against him, tasting of bitter alcohol and sweet fruits.

Dimitri wakes to an empty bed. He groans, wiping at his eyes, blinking at the noisy crinkle of something under his hand.

A dagger. A familiar dagger. That, and...

_I love you too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *AHEM*  
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIMITRI U CHEESY RAT KING!!!!!! I LOVE U AND UR SPHAGET HAIR!
> 
> In which Dimitri is PINING and Claude is PINING and honestly their worst enemies are each other bc they keep wanting to kiss each other.
> 
> (You can ignore this paragraph)  
> While the other trials were mostly inspired by the fe3h world and parts of claude and dimitri's character arcs, this one is entirely taken from the real world with some twists. In Asian culture women were married into the man's house and then were responsible for taking care of the family basically single-handedly which caused a lot of strain in some cases as sometimes her family would abandon her because she's "no longer theirs". There was no one else she could really depend on except her husband (her new family didn't usually treat her the best. yay sexism from thousands of years ago!). For the "not being able to look at your lover", that's an exaggeration of a lot more Western cultures where it's considered bad luck to see your bride before the wedding. The walk with the father down the aisle to her husband is a passing of the hands, where her dad will no longer protect her so her husband will. In a way, it's funny that both customs, though different, have a lot to do with removing women from the family they were born into and placing them in a new one (her husband's).
> 
> ANYWAY DMCL GIVES ME SO MUCH BRAINROT I HAVE ANOTHER LONG FIC FOR THEM IN THE WORKS. WITH A BETTER UPDATING SCHEDULE. SOON!

**Author's Note:**

> Did you think that I would post only a [ claude pic ](https://twitter.com/shidreamin/status/1286460912862363650/) for his birthday??? ABSOLUTELY NOT WE CELEBRATE THE MAN EVERYDAY IN THIS HOUSEHOLD
> 
> I've been holding onto this wedding fic for a while now... I'm veeery excited to finally get down and write it! >:3c It will be pretty fluffy in comparison to what I normally write lol
> 
> Also heads up! If you enjoy reading my fics, I'm running a GIVEAWAY!!! ♥ It's pinned on my twitter [ @Shidreamin ](https://twitter.com/shidreamin/)! It's open until Aug 20 and I'm hoping to give away at least one 5k commission for free! ♥ Come join so I can write you something!


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